


Captain, My Captain

by CSLong



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, But still a bookworm, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hermione is a badass, different timeline, dramione - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 15:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16431995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CSLong/pseuds/CSLong
Summary: Harry and the Golden Trio has defeated Voldemort, but his influence is still felt throughout the whole of the magical world. Harry and Ron attempt to fight the spread of evil as Aurors for the Ministry, but a tragedy has separated the Golden Trio, prompting Hermione to forge her own path in fighting the powerful evils taking root.





	1. A Mudblood's Calling Card

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning- The first chapter has implications of attempted assault. But nothing graphic.

 

2 Years After the Battle of Hogwarts

The woman at the end of the bar was the kind that you noticed.

Hell, she was the type of woman everyone noticed. She was the kind of woman who could get you to spill the darkest, dirtiest secrets from your lips in the dark of the bedroom.

Good thing he had no intention of taking her to a bedroom, or leaving her alive after the fact. It was a Muggle bar after all, she was lucky he would do her the honor of a fuck before he dispatched her, not all of the Muggles and Mudbloods were so lucky.

Then very few Muggles and Mudbloods (or witches for that matter) looked like her, and her dark, almost black eyes, were fixed on him from over the top of her glass. Her full lips were quirked up into beckoning smile.

He grinned. He knew how this night was going to end, whether she wanted it or not, but this just made it so much easier.

It made it so much easier that she was throwing back drinks faster than he could buy them.

It made it so much easier that she was leaning toward him, giving him an eye full of what was to come.

It made it so much easier that she was grabbing his forearm, laughing, simpering- like prey that had no idea it was in the presence of a predator.

It was almost too easy.

But, then, he liked to avoid unnecessary work if it was at all possible. It was one of the reasons he had never risen to prominence while the Dark Lord was alive, he wasn’t the “go-getter” that Voldemort’s inner circle had been.

Oh well. Now was his time to shine- in the gleam and chaos.

In this brave new world.

The woman pulled him out of the bar, tripping and falling all over herself. He noticed the concerned gazes coming from the people around him, especially the women, looking from the obviously inebriated girl and him.

Muggles were cowards.

They all knew something wasn’t right.

Yet no one was saying anything.

Cowards.

He followed her out into the streets. They were all but empty, lit only by flickering street lamps. It was supposed to be a charming area of London, one where old time rustic was preserved, shinnied up and then sold for a pound.

“Come on,” she said, curling a finger toward him, beckoning him toward an alley way. “You don’t mind if it’s a little dirty do you?”

He laughed.

“Oh, poppet,” he said, moving toward her. He grabbed her by the hips and pushed her into the alley. She let out a yelp of surprise, and, deliciously, a twinge of fear. His mouth descended onto hers greedily.

Godddamit, he loved this world. Sure the Death Eaters still had rules, he sure as hell couldn’t bring a Muggle home, but no one would bat an eye that he fucked her and dumped her body somewhere. He bit on her lip, eliciting another whimper of pain. His grip tightened on her shoulders, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to make her squirm.

She gasped into his mouth and he pulled away.

“What,” he growled. “A little rough for you.”

She looked up at him, shyly through a thick curtain of black lashes.

“Oh,” she said, her mouth twisting up into a smile, the kind of smile that made him jerk away slightly. “Not nearly rough enough.”

His eyes narrowed but before he could speak he was thrown back, a sharp pain, burning pain against his chest. He slammed hard into the other side of the alley, slumping down into the piss, vomit and garbage that was left there. She walked toward hm.

Suddenly, the stumble in her gait was gone. Her eyes were no longer beckoning, but brimming with venom and focus.

He growled and reached into his pocket.

“Don’t move,” she said. “Or I’ll Avada Kedavra your disgusting ass into the ground.”

He paused, fear suddenly seizing his heart. He could see, squinting into the darkness that there was a wand in her palm, poised and ready.  His hand was a few inches from his wand. He looked up at her, trying to size her up.

“You’re not a Muggle?”

She raised an eyebrow and shook her head, slowly.

“No,” she said. Her voice was silky, beautiful, and alluring. And somehow he felt himself giving leave of his senses again. He was in danger, so why couldn’t he look away from her…  
  
Shit….

“You’re a Veela,” he muttered.

She snorted. “As if I needed to be,” she said. “I didn’t need magical charm to lure someone as stupid as you into a trap.”

“Why are you doing this?”

She bent over at the waist, her eyes racked over him, disgusted and unimpressed with what she saw.

“I think you know Grayson,” she said.

“I’m on your side,” he said. “You’re a…a…pureblood right,” he said, his voice now urgent. He wasn’t a hard worker, he never had been, and he could tell from the way she held her wand, he wouldn’t be able to retrieve his and curse her in time. “I’m fighting to preserve us…to preserve our way too…”

“Sanlingua,” she muttered. His tongue suddenly felt heavy, his throat numbed, and he found that words would not move form his brain to his lips. He moaned, but all that came out were pathetic, panicked gurgles. His eyes roamed around as though looking for help.

She laughed.

“Oh don’t panic,” she said. “You baby, I’m not going to kill you.” She straightened, and stood tall over him. “At least not yet,” she said. “If your leader lets you live, and if we cross paths again, I assume I, or one of my compatriots, or better yet, my Captain, will kill you.” She paused and held out her wand pointing at him. “But, not before you deliver a message for us.”

He nodded fervently.

“Oh that won’t be enough,” she said. “I have to make sure the message is sent unencumbered.”

His lip trembled, his body shook, but there was nothing he could do. He was helpless. Alone and powerless. And in a few moments, he wished, more than he had ever wished anything, that he could scream.

****

Rowen left the ally without a stitch of blood on her clothes.

A relief, as this was her favorite dress, and she didn’t want Death Eater blood on it if she could help it. And there had been plenty to go around.

The message was permanent, carved into the belly of the Death Eater. Before she left she pressed his wand to his Dark Mark, summoning his friends.

But it was not the only mark he had now. Slashed across the ugly tattoo, was her handywork. She would have to practice, it was only her second or third try, but that being said, she was no unhappy with how it turned out.

The calling card of her captain, of her team, of the people she would willingly fight and die for.

He would bare the word forever now, etched into his skin. The word would change for them. They would make sure of it. Soon it would not fly off their lips in derision, it would not be howled to the moon before a murder. Soon it would be whispered with a tremble of terror. It would be the word that haunted their sleep, the promise that waking up was not a given anymore.

The Death Eater, what ever was left of his miserable life, would know, forever, who was behind his humiliation.

“MUDBLOOD.”

***********************

Harry never dreamed life after Hogwarts would be this hard.

He never dreamed life after defeating Voldemort would be this hard. He knew it wouldn’t be a walk in the park but he didn’t know it would be…like this…he didn’t know it would all go to shit like this.

He could smell death as soon as he stepped into the house. They had received a tip, anonymous and intentionally untraceable, despite their best efforts. He swallowed, trying to shake off the implications of that fact alone.

He knew the location was surrounded, the wards all disabled. They were armed, but if it was anything like the last one, he knew it wasn’t necessary.  All that would be left to do is catalogue and clean up, and update the registry of active Death Eaters.

“I’m taking upstairs…” called a voice. “Sanderson is in the basement.”

Harry nodded, more to himself. They knew what they were doing. They were a good team, some of the best. He walked, poised, through the house, every room he stepped in he found more dead Death Eaters, some he recognized, others he would have to ask around.

They were clean kills. There was no trace of Unforgivable Curses, but that made it no less terrifying. There was a world of magic out there, so much of it undiscovered.

“Shit,” he muttered, gently toeing one fallen body over. His eyes automatically went to the forearm, to the Dark Mark. But that wasn’t what his green eyes were searching for, praying wouldn’t be there. But his prayers remained unanswered. He looked around the room, at the fallen bodies. They were his enemies, the bad guys.

The world would not be a worse place after their deaths. If anything, it would be better.

But his heart broke all the same.

************

“It can’t be,” Ron said, shaking his head. He was pacing in front of Harry’s desk, his hands in his red hair. Harry was staring down at the stack of papers in front of him. It was over 150 pages of names. Next to it sat a pile of folders, each one containing the dossier on the recently deceased Death Eaters.  He flipped through the files and then found the names in the list, marking them off. Ron stopped in front of his desk, slamming his fist down. Harry looked up unfazed. “Harry,” he said again. “This theory of yours it’s insane, mate. You realize that right.”

“Well who else, then,” Harry said. “The timing, the Mudblood card, who the hell else would it be?”

Harry hated to say it. He had the inkling for a while. The advanced magic, the untraceable curses and messages leading them to the houses. The 72 names crossed out on their registry.

Ron sunk into the chair, and let out a long groan.

“Let’s…let’s just say for a minute that it is,” Ron said, reluctance dripping from his voice. “You’re your crazy theory is right. What…what does it mean?”

Harry looked up from the list at his best friend. At 1/3rd of the Golden Trio, 1/3rd of the reason he had made it this far in life. He sighed and raked a hand through his still unruly, black hair.

“It’s terrorism,” said Harry, reluctantly. “It’s unsanctioned, so it’s terrorism.”

“Come on mate,” said Ron. “It’s just me and you in here, is that really what you think?”

“What about Mason,” said Harry. “What about Sindara, Spellman, Clocksy,” he said. “We found them dead, in their offices, not in a house somewhere.”

“Yeah,” said Ron with a nod. “And then we found out that there are unmarked Death Eaters in the Ministry.”

“They aren’t Death Eaters just because they are sympathetic to…” Harry’s voice faltered, he couldn’t finish. “We can’t…we can’t just kill people we disagree with Ron.”

Ron sat in silence, for a moment, his mouth hard.

“Okay,” he said, his voice icier than Harry had heard it in a long time. “It’s terrorism. And if it’s her, if it’s…if it’s Hermione, what does that mean?”

Harry didn’t know how to answer that. He knew how he should. He was on his way to being a senior Auror, one of the youngest in history. He knew what the right answer was. He knew how quickly justice turned to violence when left in a vigilante’s hands.

He knew how it sounded. He knew how hypocritical it was. Just a few years ago he was a teenage boy traipsing across the bleak, British countryside, violating every rule the Ministry of Magic had.

But that had been different. The government had been overrun by corruption, no one was doing anything. Now things were different.

They were…

Ron let out a sigh and stood up.

“Look,” he said. “I know. I know officially, we’re Aurors, we work for the Ministry, but honestly,” said Ron, leaning forward over the desk. “Do you…” he tensed up angrily, before pointing at the stack of papers. “Do you really think that if things were going the way we should, this stack would be getting bigger and bigger? Do you think if we had been at all prepared for what would happen after…after Voldemort that this would be an issue?”

“Yeah well we weren’t,” said Harry. “None of us were, and now we are just…doing our best.”

Ron let out a bitter laugh. Harry knew it wasn’t directed at him, but it made him wince all the same.

“Yeah,” said Ron, standing up. “Our best wasn’t good enough was it, Harry?”

Ron didn’t wait for a response before turning and walking out of the door, leaving Harry alone in his office. He turned and opened the file, photo’s of the dead, of ugly word scrawled in blood.

His heart ached.

He though the war was going to be the hardest part.

He never thought he'd have to face this part without both his friends by his side.

 


	2. Meetings

2 Years Later

Draco was certain that a few more seconds would be the difference between life and death for him. He knew it wasn’t true. He knew that he was safe, but that didn’t stop the panic coiling in his body. He moaned, and squeezed his eyes, trying to calm the rising panic under his skin.

He breathed in tightly through his nose and exhaled through his teeth.

He had felt pain before; like when Potter sectumsemprad him, and when they had burned the Dark Mark into his flesh.

But this was a different pain. This pain sunk into his bones, under his flesh. No matter how much he prepared himself for it, no matter how much he girded himself, the pain came back just as strong, it sunk into him and felt as though it was shattering his bones, creeping up into his brain, and squeezing it like a ball of paper.

He squeezed his fist tight, rooting himself to the ground. He visualized roots growing from his feet and into the dirt below him.

The familiar pull on his skin grew, spidering across his body.

He breathed in deeply, shakily, shuddering.

He could feel the blood flowing from his nose.  But he couldn’t will his hand to reach up and wipe it away. He couldn’t make his body move at all, all he could do was focus on resisting. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t embarrassed. He had bled a lot in front of Kieran over the last six months; bled, vomited, even cried under some of the psychological training he had undergone.

“Come on Draco,” came Kieran’s voice through the haze of black stars beginning to form in front of his eyes. “Just a little longer.”

A little longer and he was certain he’d die.

Just ten more seconds, he told himself.

Ten more seconds.

Ten more seconds.

Ten more seconds.

Ten seconds never felt long. He could do anything for ten seconds.

Then he felt the alleviation of the pressure that he was certain was about to crush him, like a giant hand unclenching and releasing him. He collapsed to the ground, onto his knees, in a coughing fit.

“Well done,” said Kieran. “Two minutes and 32 seconds. Quite an impressive length of time to resist the Imperius curse.”

“Mmmhmmm,” Draco moaned rolling onto his back, and whipping around the blood from his nose. Kieran looked down at him, a look of playful disgust on his face, and held out a hand to Draco. He groaned and took the hand, pulling himself up. 

“How do you feel?”

“Like shit,” said Draco. “But…” he tensed his hands and squeezed them into fists. “But I’m recovering dexterity quicker now.”

“You’re adjusting,” said Kieran with a nod. “Even for a few seconds it can make the difference between life and death, for you or one of yours.”

Draco nodded. Kieran handed him a water bottle, which he drank gratefully.

“What’s next,” he asked.

Kieran laughed and looked at him, a speculative eyebrow raised.

“Was that not enough?”

Draco narrowed his eyes. He had been training with Kieran for six months, and the man had never cut him any slack. Not once. Kieran insisted that was normal training for new recruits, but in some of the more grueling moments, Draco wondered if it was specialized “son of a Death Eater” training.

He would understand if it had been, he had understood the need for caution.

He had expected it.

He had been confined to a cell for the first week, subjected to Veritaserum, Legilimency, and every possible revelation of spell.

He still bore the mark. His name. The Malfoy’s distinguishable features. So even though he showed up, ready to turn over information about Death Eater movement in the ministry, and a request to join the Sordidum, the highly speculated upon “terrorist” group on the front page of every newspaper in the Wizarding world, he wasn’t sure if he would actually make it out alive.

The only one who didn’t seem surprised was Kieran.

Draco hadn’t been sure if it was because the man was damn near unflappable in every situation or if he had been expecting him. He still didn’t know, even after 6 months of spending every waking hour with him.

The man was impossible to read.

Even now, he wasn’t sure what he meant.

“Come on,” said Kieran with a nod.

“What you’re not going to make me run on the pitch just to torture me?”

“Nope,” said Kieran looking down at his pocket watch. “You have a meeting.”

“Now,” asked Draco.

“Well in 15 minutes,” said Kieran. “But that’ll give you time to wash your face.”

Draco rolled his eyes. Honestly discomfort was not new for him. But looking like a ragged bum sure as hell was. It almost made him laugh. His father would be so ashamed to see him like this, dressed in dirty, stained sweats, unshaven, and long, unkept hair. Oh well, he doubted very much that Lucius was looking his best in the cell in Azkaban.

“Who am I meeting with?”

Kieran looked over his shoulder at Draco.

“You daft? Who do you think?”

“Well,” said Draco. “Since you’re the only one I’ve been allowed to share more than two words with it would be hard for me to guess, wouldn’t it?”

Kieran regarded him for a moment and then looked away.

“And here the Captain was telling us how clever you are,” he muttered.

“The Captain?”

“Yes,” said Kieran. “The Captain, the Boss, the head of the little army you came begging to join.”

Draco’s eye brows shot up in surprise.

“Wait,” he said. “You’re not… you’re not the Captain?”

He snorted and shook his head.

“So if I’m meeting the Captain it means…”

“It means your preliminary training is over. It means the Captain feels like you can be trusted. Or…”

Draco looked at him, worriedly, as Kieran shot him a devious smile.

“Or, it means the Captain plans to obliviate your memory and drop you somewhere in the middle of London.”

“And you don’t know which one it is, then?”

Kieran shook his head.

“No,” he said. “You are out of my hands now my boy.”

Draco didn’t speak the rest of the way.  Kieran escorted him to his tiny room. The room he wasn’t allowed to leave without an escort, the room that had almost driven him mad a number of times over the past 6 months. But maybe, finally, things were changing. His heart was pounding as he splashed water into his face, cleaning off the drying blood and sweat. He quickly changed into some less sweaty, though equally unattractive clothing. He felt his pockets out of habit, and then remembered that his wand wasn’t missing. He would never get used to not having one, and hoped, soon, it would be an option again.

When he opened the door. Kieran was waiting for him.

“Come on,” he said, motioning for him to fall in line. He led him through the house. It was a large house, but not nearly large enough to house the army he knew existed, leading him to draw the easy conclusion that there were more.

He still wasn’t certain about how far reaching the group was. For a great while, before he went into hiding, there was only minimal coverage of the group, reports on Death Eaters. But soon, he imagined, the Ministry was unable to keep a tight lid and front page stories were popping up all over Britain. They were primarily speculation and obfuscating quotes from Potter, and other Ministry leaders. But he could read between the lines, and he heard rumblings from Death Eaters, enough rumblings to make him want to seek them out.

Suddenly Kieran came to a stop in front of the door, and he turned abruptly to Draco.

“Well,” he said. “If she obliviates you, I likely won’t see you again.” Draco waited, certain that was not the end of the sentence. But Kieran turned away and rapped on the door.

“Come in,” called a voice from the other side, a voice that he could have sworn belonged to a woman. Kieran opened the door, still blocking his view.

“Captain,” he said. “I have the Malfoy kid here.”

“He’s not a kid,” scolded the voice and Draco felt his heart drop. “If he’s a kid then that would make me a kid.”

Oh shit.

He knew that scold. He had heard that scold. He had been at the receiving end of that scold.

“Sorry boss,” said Kieran with a shrug. Draco was looking at the ground, not even sure how this introduction was going to go.

“Never mind,” she said. He glimpsed up slightly, not enough to make eye contact but enough to take in the sight of the spacious office, and the two women bent over a table, looking over books. One of them was ungodly beautiful, enough to make him momentarily forget why he was here.

“Rowen…would you excuse me for a bit so I can speak with Draco alone.”

Draco. That pulled him out of his reverie and back to reality. She never called him that at school. Maybe it wasn’t her, maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.

The word fell off her tongue so naturally it was disorienting.

“You got it,” answered the woman.

The woman, Rowan, crossed the room and offered a beaming smile to Kieran. He returned it and slung an arm around her shoulder.

“Come on,” she said. “I need a drink. I can’t stare at books as long as she can.”

“None of us can, kid,” said Kieran. He walked past Draco and shut the door.

Draco had spent most of his time at Hogwarts a cowardly twat, and now, suddenly, that same impulse came rushing back. Even caged in that cell when he first arrived, having his mind probed and prodded, he didn’t feel this vulnerable.

He bit back his instinct to sneer. It was like an impulse when he saw her, a learned behavior he still hadn’t unlearned.

“Are you just going to stand there all day, Draco,” she said, looking up from her book. His eyes flickered up momentarily to see that she was staring at him. “Or are you going to have a seat.”

And god, how he wanted to run. Draco took a deep breath and finally, fully looked up at the woman in the room with him. All hope that he was wrong, all doubt fled…

“Bloody hell,” he said, crossing the room and sitting on the chair in front of her desk.

She laughed and move to sit on the other side of the desk, and Draco began to squirm. It was as if he was back at Hogwarts and called into the teacher’s office because he had been bad. She sat across from him, surprisingly relaxed. More relaxed than he ever saw her at school.

“Is that all you have to say Draco,” she said, mock pain in her voice. “And here I was thinking it would be like a charming school reunion.”

He didn’t know what to say. The whole thing, all of it was simply…unbelievable.

“Granger,” he finally said. It felt odd and heavy on his tongue. It had been so long since he had said, so long since he had even thought about her.

“From your shocked expression, I’m guessing you didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what, Granger,” he said, a cock of his head. “That you were the leader of the wizarding world’s most wanted terrorist group? No…I had no bloody idea.”

Hermione made an odd expression and picked up a tea cup, magically stirring the spoon in circles.

“Most wanted,” she repeated, taking a sip. “That doesn’t seem right does it,” she said. “Especially when there are actually Death Eaters out there still quite powerful in their hate and influence.” She snorted, and then shrugged. “Well that certainly tells you something about the ministries priorities doesn’t it…” she looked up at him. “Tea, Draco?”

His mouth fell open slightly, but he quickly recovered.

“No…no,” he sputtered. “I don’t want tea. I want to bloody hell know what’s going on here?”

Hermione sat the cup down and looked at him across the table. And, there, briefly, he could see it, a look, a particular kind of look. A look that brought him back to the moment when she had broken his nose in third year. It wasn’t threating, it was certain. It held authority.

“Hmmm,” she said. “I’m disappointed. I hope the last few years you haven’t made a transition from semi-idiot into full idiot, I led you here under the assumption that the transition had been in the opposite direction.”

“Led me here…” he paused and his brow furrowed. “Wait, I’m not an idiot.”

“I’m just surprised you didn’t guess it was me, the name, the calling card, and you were the first one to give me the moniker.”

Draco wanted to shrink into the floor and die. Of course, it was here. Even now he could see the pale scar etched into her dark skin, the scar that corresponded with the marks left on the fallen Death Eaters.

The Mudblood’s calling card, indeed.

“Well,” he said, suddenly becoming defensive. “How was I supposed to know you would abandon the Chosen One, and the Weasel for a life of vigilante justice? I was in hiding for the better part of a year and I wasn’t obsessively keeping track of the Golden Trio like the rest of the world.”

“Clearly,” she said, her voice deadpan. “But I’ve been keeping track of you.”

“Jeez Granger,” he said. “Stalk much?”

“Yes,” she said with nod. “In fact, it’s half of the job actually. Stalking possible Death Eaters, watching their movements. We came across you right before you went into hiding, when…”

Draco’s jaw clenched, and he looked up at her, glaring through the hair that had fallen into his eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

Hermione met his gaze steadily, her hands were folded on the desk, a clear sign of non aggression, but he felt nervous and exposed, his eyes darted around the room wondering what the best escape would be if that became necessary.

“That’s fine,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “It’s not what we are here to talk about.”

“So what are we here to talk about Granger? You led me, here, apparently,” he spat the last word. “So here I am. What do you want?”

“Oh don’t be so dramatic, Draco,” she said. “That was certainly a character trait I hoped you had grown out of.”

“I’m not dramatic,” he said.

Hermione’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Oh come now,” she said. “Be a little self-aware. You were quite certain you were on deaths door when Buckbeak had nipped you.”

Draco’s hand clenched into an involuntary fist. He had forgotten how infuriating she was.

“Being an insufferable know it all was the trait I would have hoped you had grown out of,” he muttered.

“Not at all,” she said. “In fact, it turns out, it’s what makes me so good at my job. I am certain before I act in every single case…” She paused and leaned forward toward him, her brown eyes boring into him ruthlessly as though racking through his soul. “Except one.”

Draco could barely keep back the sneer as she looked at him. It was his defense. She had all the power, and at that moment treating her with contempt was the only thing he had. Except he didn’t even have that, she also had power over him because he wanted to be here.

At least he thought he did.

“You were a gamble, Draco,” she said. “One I’m not even sure about yet.” She took another sip of her tea. “When you went into hiding after…after the Death Eaters approached you. I didn’t know if it was out of self-preservation alone, or something deeper. So we watched you, we listened to you, we planted clues that would lead you to us, if that was what you wanted.”

“Why would you do that, Granger,” he said. “Given our history I don’t know why you would give a bakers fuck about me.”

Hermione didn’t respond immediately. Draco met her gaze, this time, equally unflinching. He had nothing to lose. She would obliviate him or not, there was no use being deferential at this point. He took the moment to take in her face. There was so much unchanged about her face. The same mouth, the same studious gaze, and quizzical brow. There were perhaps a few more scars, a small one over her eyebrow, a fresher one from her jaw to her ear lobe. It seemed perhaps, despite the fact that she was a ruthless terrorist now, Granger was very much the same person she had always been.

“You’re an asset,” she finally said. “You know Death Eaters, you know how they think, how they move, who they are, where they are connected. The information you have already given us led to three major stings at Death Eaters homes.”

“Are they dead now Granger,” he asked, his voice cold. And this is where she was different. She didn’t flinch away from his words, her face didn’t harden, and she didn’t prepare to defend herself, to justify herself.

“Yes,” she answered. “They are dead. Some killed by me, some by my people.”

“Your people,” he said with the shake of his head. “And how did you assort this motley crew. Did you put out an add in the Prophet? “Mudblood witch seeking Death Eater Hunters- Purebloods need not apply?”

“Oh we have many purebloods,” she said. “Kieran is a pureblood, as is Rowen, the woman who was in here who you undoubtedly noticed.”

“Yeah what the hell is up with that, is she a Veela or something?”

Hermione’s mouth turned upward slightly.

“Yes,” she said. “She is. A useful tool in itself, but she’s also particularly brilliant with wandless magic.”

Draco sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“So, now what?”

“That’s up to you, Draco.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kieran has been giving me weekly reports as to your progress, you’ve undergone rigorous tests and spells, some created by us to assure that there were no secrets ways Death Eaters had learned to circumvent our fact-finding missions, and you came here because you want to join us. The why is your own to keep for as long as you see fit,” she said. “The question is, now that you know the identify of Sordidum leader, now that you know who you will be answering to, whose leadership you must submit to, do you still want to join?”

Draco thought for a moment.

Did he?

She was right. Granger would be his commander, his leader. His missions and primary actions would be given by her. It was still mind boggling. Even at his worst he never deluded himself enough to say that Hermione was not brilliant, but he never thought of her as a tactician, as a leader. But, clearly, she was doing something right.

He wanted to be a part of this. He wanted to fight, to not spend the rest of his life that same sniveling ass-hole of a child who could never commit to one side or the other. The Draco disgusted him, it’s one of the only things he openly agreed with his father on.

But could he still do it if it meant working with…under…Granger?

“Yes,” he said, finally, before he could talk himself out of it, before he could overthink it. “Yes. I still…I still want in.”

Despite it all, for the first time, he saw a flash of surprise in Grangers eyes. This gave him a brief feeling of triumph, that he had called her bluff and now the ball was in her court. Then, as quickly as it came, it went, and she smiled at him.

“Wonderful,” she said. The door opened, making Draco turn around quickly to see Kieran in the door.

“Hey boss,” he said. “You called.”

Draco didn’t bother to ask when she called, or how she called, or if he would have to give Granger unfettered access to his conscious mind. It was too late for all of that.

Kieran looked at Draco and smiled.

“Hey kid,” he said, with a smile It was the first time he had smiled at him, and it was a pleasant one, almost paternal. “Glad to see she didn’t Obliviate you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Not yet at least.”

“Draco is not an official member of the Sordidum,” she said.

“Does that mean I get to…you know…move around, take a piss with out this one breathing over my shoulder.”

Hermione looked up at Kieran, who held his hands up.

“Not literally,” he said, hurriedly.

Hermione looked back at Draco.

“Yes,” she said. “You have access to the home, the facilities…”

“The chore wheel,” said Kieran.

Draco looked at Kieran.

“A chore wheel, really?”

Kieran looked pointed at Hermione. Draco turned back toward her.

“A Chore wheel? In one of the Headquarters for dangerous terrorists?’

“Dangerous terrorists still need not let their bathrooms grow back mold,” she said, calmly, before turning back to the book open on her desk. “Kieran,” she said, not looking up. “Show Draco out, but do still keep an eye on him, and on any of our less forgiving members.”

“Should I be worried about that,” asked Draco, looking at her. He wasn’t really afraid. But he wanted to know what to expect.

“It’ll take a while Draco,” she said. “The Malfoy name brings with it a lot of enemies, a lot of hurt people. I trust my people to be professional, to put mission above feelings, but I would prepare myself for a chilly reception if I were you.”

Draco didn’t mind that. Chilly he could take, but he wanted to know if he should sleep with one eye open or not.

“Come on kid,” said Kieran. “Let’s go.”

Draco moved to follow him out of the office, but he stopped, and turned toward Granger.

“Granger,” he said.

“Yes Draco,” she answered, her eyes still cast down on the book, face completely obscured by her falling coiled curls.

“When did I become Draco,” he said.  Granger looked up at him, briefly.

“You know in Muggle prisons, one of the things that makes it the hardest to transition?” Granger paused, even though Draco was quite certain she didn’t expect him to respond. “It’s the dehumanization, people lose their identity, their humanity, they become numbers, and they lose who they are. It helps if they have someone who is reminding them who they are. We want you to successfully transition, and I don’t know if exclusively calling you by your last name will help that, for anyone…Draco.”

He considered this.

He was a Malfoy.

And no amount of transitioning would help with that. He was still a Malfoy, his motives were still questionable, even to him. 

But whatever made her feel comfortable. Whatever she needed to hold onto that inane Gryffindor instinct to see the good in other people.

********************

 

If anything else, this next chapter in his life, short as it may be, would be fascinating. When Malfoy left her office, Hermione tried to concentrate, tried to make sense of the blur of words in front of her, but the books were old and she couldn’t afford to get any tears on them. She slammed the tome shut and fell back into her chair, drawing a sharp ragged breath.

She was not expecting this.

She was not expecting everything to come rushing back so quickly. She was the leader of the Sordidum, the Mudblood feared across Death Eater circles, she had fought, bled and nearly died dozens of times for that claim, and suddenly she felt like she did on that Quidditch pitch, the first time Malfoy called her Mudblood, the first time she felt, clearly and distinctly, what she had always suspected; that she did not belong.

It wasn’t Malfoy himself. He didn’t have that power over her…not anymore. The word Mudblood didn’t cut her down. She had owned it and reclaimed it as a source of power. But it was what Malfoy reminded her of.  He reminded her of who she had been then, the good and the bad. Things, even at their most complicated, were so clear. Stand by Harry and Ron. Get them out alive. That had been her purpose, her role.

And it had taken a long time to learn what it meant to exist outside of that role.

And there was a part of her that still missed that role, and an even bigger part of her missed the ones she filled that role for.

It had been hell to leave them, a hell that was made easier only by time, but it had never fully left. She carried with her a profound sense of absence, a longing for a life that was surrounded with friends and family.

She had friends now, of course, but it was different. Not only because she was their leader, but because they were all different. They were bonded by violence, by war, by a shared belief that Wizarding world would only fall into the same patterns over and over unless the problem was snuffed out completely.

Much different than bonds born in childhood.

No less powerful, but vastly different.

And the moment she saw him…Malfoy, it hit her like a tidal wave how different her life was now, how impossible going back was.

She couldn’t care less about what a prat he had been at Hogwarts, how he had tormented her for years, or what his upbringing up. All she cared about was that he provided several tactical advantages; inside knowledge, information, a knack for potions, something lacking in her arsenal as of now.

That was the person she was now. It made her a brilliant leader, but she didn’t know what kind of person it made her.

She sighed and looked back down at the book in front of her, in an attempt to continue her translations. This was the most pressing thing right now. There was, she was finding, outside of the constraints of the Ministry, so much magic in the world, waiting to be unlocked, magic that was fearful and terrifying, magic that could save lives and destroy others.

She had raided many Death Eater Headquarters, and this was the first thing she had found that was of particular interest to her in a long while, a book she had never heard of, an unfamiliar title, untranslated, raw magic.

She ran her fingers under the frail paper and flipped the page carefully, reverently.

The more she knew, the more she knew about what they knew, what they we replotting, the more likely she would be to be able to protect them.

That was all that mattered.

It was all that ever mattered.


	3. Mixers and Mingling

Suddenly, the house seemed much bigger, much more organized and less like a prison. He wondered if it was just a shift in perspective or some kind of spell that had been placed on him at the start, that sounded like a precaution Granger would take.

“How do you keep a place like this a secret,” he had asked Kieran, a couple of months into his training.

“A lot of magic,” he said. “For anyone who passes by, it looks like a small normal house, even tricked out with people moving around inside. From the outside it looks like a normal family.”

“And what happens when people want to come in and say hi to neighbors,” Draco had asked.

“No one’s home,” said Kieran. “Plus the entrance changes every day.”

Draco remembered thinking, at the time, that sounded like some kind of Room of Requirements magic. Maybe that should have tipped him off. But he wasn’t exactly in his right mind when he came here, he was in the most desperate state of his life.

“All right,” said Kieran, stopping. “Here’s your room.”

Draco stopped and looked inside, it looked like his old room for the past 6 months, just a little bigger.

“Most of us don’t get our own rooms,” said Kieran. “But…”

“She doesn’t want anyone to kill me in my sleep,” finished Draco.

“Oh no one would kill you,” said Kieran. “Maybe flay your forearm, but probably not kill you.”

Draco snorted.

“Trust me, I’ve tried.”

His fingers traced the scar tissue over his Dark Mark, the edges were ragged and cut, but each time the skin repaired itself, it did so with a clear, unobscured skull and snake.

“Yeah,” said Kieran. “Voldemort doesn’t seem like someone who would take defection litely.”

“Yeah,” said Draco. “Unlike, Granger who just obliviates them?”

He regretted it as soon as it came out of his mouth. He forgot himself momentarily. Kieran wasn’t a friend, Kieran was a solider. Kieran had a commanding officer, and, somehow, so did he. He looked up slowly at Kieran’s glare.

“That’s all you get,” said Kieran, his voice calm. “Take the mickey out of the Captain around drinks is one thing, comparing her to a genocidal maniac is quite another. And while we are at it, she doesn’t obliviate everyone, you were an exception for reasons I think you can appreciate.”

Draco nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah of course, sorry.” Was he sorry? He still was having trouble sorting out how he was feelings. There were certain things he would have to pretend if he wanted a place here, if he wanted to actually do something, if he wanted to ever be able to set foot outside his house again.

“I’ll cut you some slack because you went to school with her, and I want to hear about what the hell that was like, but,” Kieran held up a finger. “Anything that smells like disrespect will come back for you during training.”

“Training,” said Draco, his voice far whinier than he meant for it to be.

“Yeah,” said Kieran with a laugh. “Training. You aren’t done just because now you actually have some skin in the game.”

“Fair enough,” said Draco.

Skin in the game.

Damn.

It had been a long time since he had skin in any game, and despite it all, the thought excited him.

********

“This is so fucking brilliant, Captain,” shouted Rowen, over her shoulder at Hermione, who was clining onto her for dear life.

Hermione was still petrified, her eyes shut tight, refusing to look down at the countryside stretching out beneath them, but inside she felt a flicker of warmth at the comment. Hermione wasn’t sure if it was who Rowen was, or the Veela allure, but affirmation from her the kind of thing that made you feel like you could do anything.

Even survive a few hundred feet in the air atop a structurally unsound cleaning tool that doubled for flight purposes.

“Thank-you,” she said. “Though it only works with already marked Death Eaters.”

“Well,” said Rowen, looking over her shoulder again. “I guess if you could do everything you’d be god and that wouldn’t be fair would it.”

“Rowen,” she screamed burying her face in Rowen’s back. Rowen turned forward and maneuvered out of the way of the reaching spire. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

Rowen laughed and followed the thread of green light coming from the wand Hermione had clutched in her fist.

“Don’t worry Captain,” she said. “I have you.”

Hermione took a shuttering breath. Her mind combing through ways to make this spell work with apparition. Apparition was by far her preferred method of travel, but it was dodgy to follow a locator spell through apparition, floo, or portkey. You had to be able to see the thread leading you in order to follow it.

Finally, after what seemed like forever the thread disappeared outside of a pub, causing Hermione to pocket her wand and prepare her feet to touch the solid ground. There were so many things she wasn’t afraid of anymore, but heights were not one of them. Her skill on a broom was every bit as lacking as it had ever been. 

A weakness she willingly shared with her team, but would rarely broadcast to the level she had with Rowen.

“Don’t worry, Captain,” said Rowen with a fetching wink. “We can apparate back.”

“Uh huh,” said Hermione. “Come on,” she said, pulling Rowen into a secluded, shadowed alley. “Hold still.”

Rowen rolled her eyes. “Come on Captain,” she said. “You could do this with your eyes closed.”

“I could try,” said Hermione. “But then you may end up with a beak for a nose, or a rat tail, or chicken wings.”

“What the hell are you transfiguring me into, Hermione?”

Hermione didn’t answer but moved her wand meticulously. Rowen was right, she could transfigure in her sleep at this point, but she took it seriously every time. Her want moved and twirled and ducked, stitching together a new human. She didn’t go for big changes, small changes to hair color, to the nose, to the bone structure, to the eyes.

Of course most Death Eaters who came into their path died, so changing wasn’t always necessary, but when there was a chance of coming into contact with others, like at a pub, they had to make sure no one could place them at the scene.

Especially Hermione.

That was the power of her position. Everyone knew it was her, well, anyone who had access to the scenes, anyone who knew her, and it had all but been stated out right in the Prophet, but no one could prove it, not yet at least.

“Perfect,” said Hermione, nodding at the changes. She then turned her wand on herself. Her hair flattened, straight and sleek. She laughed to herself, thinking how much she would have loved this spell as a child, when her natural hair caused her so much grief and insecurity. Now, she missed it every time she had to disguise herself. She lightened her skin a few shades, and changed her eyes.  That would be enough for now.

“I hope this worked,” said Hermione.

“It did,” said Rowen. “You’re brilliant, remember.”

Before killing one of the last Death Eaters, Hermione had been able to get a closer look at the mark,  to study it, and sort of magic was used to create it. It was a specialized spell, it had hints of other magics in it, but it was it’s own sort of nightmare from Voldemort’s mind.

It took several months, but Hermione was able to specialize a tracking spell, designed to attract to the enchantment that protected the Dark Mark’s. It wouldn’t last long though, nothing ever did. They would find some way to get a few steps ahead of them, and then they would deduce what it was and change it. A never ending game of cat and mouse, never quite certain who was which.

It was quite exhausting.

But they didn’t have the numbers or the funding for anything expansive, all they could do was protect Muggles, and Muggle-Born, and remove the threat where it came up. But, it seemed, in the wake of his death, Voldemort’s philosophies have been fanned like wildfire, now with a martyr to rally behind, now with “proof” that they are being replaced and displaced.

Economic anxiety…the Prophet called it, when young men and women started to rally around the Dark Mark, and Voldemort. Young, scared people who don’t know how to exist in this new world.

Hell, they had even written a profile about one of the new leaders. He was clever, never once calling himself a Death Eater, rather a “free-thinker”, willing to challenge what everyone else was accepting on face value, but everything he said reeked of admiration for Voldemort.  Of course, he remained anonymous, to protect himself from violence and terrorism, from her.

It had been a good call.

“Remember,” said Rowen. “Look like you belong.”

Hermione rolled her eyes.

“I know.”

“Really,” said Rowen. “Because the full on attacks and strategy tends to be your forte, not blending in.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Come on.”

Hermione’s eyes flickered to glowing sign that read, “The Witches Brew.” It was a respectable establishment, clean and orderly, with the occasional punctuating laugh. Hermione looked at Rowen, who nodded.

Hermione made her way to the other side of the bar, feigning going to the loo while Rowen found a seat and was already charming the bartender, allowing Hermione free range to explore, her eye searching for a Dark Mark.

The magic usually didn’t work on individual marks, it responded to a high concentration of that particular magic.  She understood there very well could be marked individuals who were not a danger, who bare it with, at best, shame and at worse a nostalgic, heirloom hearkening back to a better time. She would judge someone for that, but that didn’t warrant a death sentence. She searched exposed arms, finding nothing. She looked up. There was only one story.

She slipped into the bathroom and gave it a once over. She looked around before taking out her wand.

“Revelare,” she whispered, flourishing it grandly. But no spells were revealed. She was about to go see what Rowen was able to ascertain from the bartender when someone else entered. She quickly pocketed her wand and moved to the sink, washing her hands.

The woman smiled tightly at her, as though she were anxious. She was young, maybe even a few years younger than Hermione.

“Hello,” said Hermione.

The girl nodded and disappeared inside the stall. Hermione continued to let the water run. She could hear rustling from the stall, and then the sound of clicking. Hermione bent at the waste. The woman was standing, her feet facing the wall.

Hermione’s instincts were going crazy. The instincts she had learned to trust, especially in the last few years. She took out her wand and opened it. She could see the girl begin to turn but before she could her eyes shut and she crumpled to the ground. Hermione caught her and leaned her up against the wall.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Trust me, this is better for you…”  
  
The bathroom door opened again, this time Rowen walked in. She looked from the unconscious girl to Hermione.

“I assume you found something?”

Hermione nodded and gestured for her to join her in the stall. Behind the toilet was a pressed in brick, opened up a camouflaged door that matched the tile behind it.

“Yeah that checks out,” said Rowen. “The owner of this fine establishment is a total prick.”

Hermione stepped onto the toilet seat and then through the door behind it.

“This is just not sanitary,” she muttered.

Rowen laughed and followed her through the door. It led to a descending case of stairs. They descended, quietly. They returned their wands to their pockets to assure that they were perceived as non-threatening but both of them were ready.

The stairs led to a hallway. It did not have the dilapidated look of some of the tunnels in Britain. This looked new, clean and sterile. They could hear voices ahead as the tunnel met up with another.

“’Scus me,” said a warm voice behind them. They turned to see three young men behind them. They were handsome, and well-groomed. “Are you both here for the meeting?”

“Yes,” said Rowen. “But I’m afraid we’re new, so we still get a little turned around. We would appreciate if you could help us out.”

“Oh of course,” said one of the young men, stepping forward. “I’m Lewis Eckles…”

Eckles.

Hermione knew that name.  Her eyes flickered to his forearm, there was no mark there.

“Lewis,” she said. “So nice to meet you, and so thoughtful of you to help us. I’m Bianca and this is Mariella.”

Lewis took Rowen’s hand and kissed it.

And Hermione was renewed with a whole new respect for Rowen. She knew the disgust that was lingering behind her limpid gaze. But Rowen was a professional, an amazing actress, and, like Hermione, would do whatever she needed to do.

The other boys introduced themselves, before they walked Hermione and Rowen through the winding tunnels. Rowen and Hermione tried to direct conversation away from the “meeting”, given that they would not be able to answer any questions. So Hermione took a page out of Rowen’s book, shameless flirting and diverting. She clung to an arm, and batted her lashes at some young man named Emmet. 

But, out of the corner of her eye, she watched Lewis Eckles.

Son of Olaf Eckles, a member of the Wizengamot. No mark. She had looked, extensively. He was known for advocating for soft sentences for certain Death Eaters, citing fear, abuse and manipulation on the part of Voldemort and other more dangerous Death Eaters.

“These are not all evil people,” Eckles had said. “Some of them have simply been led astray. There are fine people on both sides of this debate and we cannot let our prejudices impel us toward unlawful and cruel punishments.”

Never mind that she, Harry, Ron and what was left of the Order, and several Hogwarts students took the stand to point out the atrocities of some of the “fine people”, Eckles rallied support for many of them.

Though he was clever, he dared not show his cards in the sentencing of someone like Lucius Malfoy.

Enough to raise suspicions, but not enough to act.

That was something that the papers missed.  She and the Sordidum have had several chances at several different suspected Death Eaters, and Voldemort sympathizers, but she knew the cost of going to the drastic measures she had. She had to be beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were active, violent and dangerous.

Though, unlike the Ministry, she didn’t wait until after the damage had been done.

“And here we are ladies,” said Eckles. “Just in time too.”

He tapped his wand on a portrait, and it swung open into a loud and crowded room. It was stuff full of people, far more than were up in the bar. Hermione took in the sight. They were all so young, and she felt a pang of anger and sadness clench her heart.

Young, fresh-faced, and full of magical potential; some, perhaps recent Hogwarts students. Some of them could’ve been first years by her sixth or seventh year.

“Have a seat here,” said Eckles, his eyes still on Rowen. “I’ll touch base with you after the meeting.” He bowed to them both with practiced charm. It was disturbing because it was not the slithering kind of charm she expected, but sincere, and goofy. Human. And that was truly terrifying. “Enjoy.”

Eckles made his way to the front of the room, where a seat was waiting for him. More seats were being conjured all around the room to compensate for the crowds.

Hermione could feel Rowen looking at her.

“So exciting,” said Rowen. “I never dreamed there would be this many.”

No attack tonight. We can’t take this many on our own.

“I know,” exclaimed Hermione, looking around with mock excitement. “And so many of our own peers.  And those mudblood loving idiots at the ministry think we are dying out.”

That was sincere, and required no translation on Rowen’s part.

“Do you know anyone,” asked Rowen.

“Familiar names,” said Hermione.

“Right,” said a girl, turning around in the seat in front of them. She smiled at them. “Sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just…I was just thinking that! It’s so easy to feel discouraged, like you’re the only one not being fooled by fake news, and being here and seeing that there are still some good wizard names out in the world it’s just…” she stopped and let out an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to just blah all over you it’s just…exciting.”

“No need to apologize,” said Hermione. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Lorraine Snowfire,” she said, holding out her hand.

“Pleasure to meet you Lorrain,” said Hermione shaking it.  Hermione was about to introduce them when a voice cleared its throat from the front of the room. They all turned to the front of the room where a blonde-haired man was standing. He was perhaps the only person over 30 in the room.

“Hello everyone,” he said. “We are going to go ahead and get started so if everyone would have a seat.” Voices quieted and heads turned toward the front in rapt attention. “As many of you know, I am Damon Rowle, and thank you all for coming to our little meeting.”

The group erupted to cheers and applause. Hermione’s blood ran cold. Rowle.

She knew that name. She had dueled with a Rowle on more than one occasion. Several of the Rowle’s were in Azkaban, but not all of them, clearly. It was hard to keep track of everyone in the wizarding world, especially with the…incestuous nature of some of the pure-blood families.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said. “If you’re enjoying the refreshments you can thank my lovely wife, Euphemia.” He gestured to a lovely woman in the front row. She blushed and made a “stop it” motion with her hand.

“Oh my gosh,” exalted Lorraine. She turned around and looked at them, as though sharing a sweet moment with friends, her hands clasped over her heart. “They are so cute.”

Hermione nodded, hoping the tightness in her expression could be explained by sitting in rapt attention to Rowle.

“I look out at you and I am filled with hope.” His eyes swept across the crowd, as though he were making eye contact with every single person in the room. “I am filled with a sense of being among, family.” Hermione looked down the row, she sat on, catching glimpses of black peaking from under rolled up sleeves. Some Death Eaters, she knew were opting out of the mark, especially if they were prominent, others wore there’s with pride, and still some used simply did cosmetic cover ups.  She could see several who were wearing there’s proudly tonight.

“As family, I want you to think of me as a father. There will come a time when people will try and make you feel as though you are evil for your beliefs. Many people, most people, don’t know how to think for themselves, they just believe what they are told by disgruntled children, and wizards with clear agendas. They make unsubstantiated claims, and the sheeple just fall into place.” A chorus of cheers rose up from the room, angry, defiant fists flung into the air. “Because they are told too! It gives me hope to look out and see so many of our young people holding fast to what they know to be true. Who don’t apologize for who they are, who are unwilling to compromise on their principals.” The cheers grew louder, and Rowle’s voice raised to match it. “There may come a time where you will have to stand. To lay claim your birthright as real witches and wizards, to not see our noble line snuffed out. Know that you are seen here, know that you are valued here. You are not alone.”

The crowd erupted into cheers and stood, roaring in approval. Hermione looked over at Rowen who shrugged and stood.

“That was a lot of words to actually never say anything,” muttered Hermione to Rowen. But they clapped along all the same.  When Rowle’s descended the small raised dais, the crowd stood and dispersed, gathering into excited chatting groups around plates of cookies and punch, some waiting in line to meet Rowle and shake his head.

“Ummm…” said Rowen softly. “Is this…”

“A mixer,” said Hermione with a quick nod of her head. “That’s sure as hell what it looks like.”

Rowen let out a short bark of laugh.

“Well, it’s hard out there for blood supremacists,” she said with a shrug. “Should we go…” Rowen looked around. “Mix?”

“Yeah,” said Hermione, “Let’s do it.” They split up and moved about the room, inside Hermione was a little disappointed, well more than a little. She had come ready for a fight, ready to make the world better in her own violent way. She knew, likely, this time would be just as helpful, give them an idea of what to expect, but honestly it was simply depressing. She stopped and lingered by a table of literature, picking up a few flyers and pamphlets.

“Inspiring, isn’t it?”

Hermione turned around to see the woman introduced Euphemia at the beginning of the night. She was even more lovely up close, with bright blue eyes and blonde hair. Hermione nodded.

“Oh yes,” she said. “I’m just a little overwhelmed by it all.”

“Of course,” said Euphemia, putting a hand on her arm. “It’s a lot to take in, a bit like coming up for air right, to see how many people there are sympathetic to the cause.”

Hermione looked down at the pamphlet in her hand.

“Why Should I feel Guilty for being Pureblood” it read.

“Yeah,” said Hermione nodding her head. “Yeah exactly.” She looked at her and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” said Hermione. “I’m kind of awe struck.”

Euphemia smiled at her.

“Why is that?”

“I just…I remember his brother, Thorfinn…” play it cool Hermione. “He fought in the Battle of Hogwarts.”

Euphemia nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “He did. How did you know?”

“Oh,” said Hermione, said with a nervous giggle. “I just…I’ve studied profiles on all of the Death Eaters who were imprisoned for their brave stand for freedom.”

Euphemia looked at her. “Well you’re studious aren’t you?”

“Well,” she said. “It seems there are so few heroes to look up to, and often you find them on the wrong side of bars these days.”

“So true,” said Euphemia. “And what is it you hope to do with your future?”

“Well,” she said, shyly. “I promise it’s not hero worship, but I hope one day to be a lawyer. It started when I was studying the Death Eaters. I saw how poorly represented they were, how little evidence there actually was,” her voice rose with trembling outrage, her eyes watered slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get so…”

“Oh no,” said Euphemia, grabbing her shoulder. “My sweet girl, it’s okay to be angry. That kind of passion is exactly what we will need in the days ahead. Don’t lose hope…” Euphemia leaned in closer to her. “Things will change soon, very soon.” She offered a wink. “Enjoy the rest of your night, my dear.”

Hermione nodded her thanks. When Euphemia was out of her line of site, Hermione looked up to search for Rowen who was speaking to group of people, all of them hanging on her every word. Rowen quickly made eye contact, and Hermione nodded.

The two met back at the door, resources, flyers and future meeting dates in hand. They walked in silence down the hall before apparating out into the ally.

“That was…something,” said Rowen.

“Yup,” said Hermione.

“Debrief at HQ?”

“Yuup.”

########

“A ferret?!”

Draco rolled his eyes as Kieran broke into peals of laughter, more laughter than he had ever heard from the man. It was strange to think that a few hours ago this man had knocked him unconscious into a wall in dueling practice.

Next to him sat Areenia, an American wizard with an accent that he had never heard before. She, unlike Kieran and Rowen, had not been with the Sordidum from the beginning. She had joined in the last year, but had, according to Kieran, had seen her fair share of action by now. The burn that scarred the right side of her face, and rendered that eye useless, was a stark reminder, even as they passed around a bottle of whiskey.

“Yeah, a ferret.”

“And he bounced you around like rubber ball?”

Draco shrugged and tossed back the whiskey that was making him slightly more amenable to the discussion.

“And it was a professor,” said Areenia. “A professor hired to nurture and teach?”

“Well…” Draco said, moving his hand back and forth. “Kind of. Not really. He was actually a psychopathic Death Eater who served Voldemort who snuck into the school via Polyjuice potion. But, from all I heard about the real Mad-Eye I don’t think it would have been out of character.”

Kieran laughed and topped of his drink.

“You’re right,” he said. “Hogwarts was a treacherous place.”

“They let children fight dragons,” said Draco. “Children! The place was a literal death trap.”

“I bet you got funding though,” said Areenia. “All of our accidents came from malfunctioning wands, and books with spells so old we couldn’t even read them. By the time I graduated I am pretty sure I invented a million original spells by mistake.”

“So,” said Kieran looking over his shoulder. “What was the Captain like at school.”

Draco looked from him to Areenia, who was also leaning forward, eyes wide with excitement. Draco felt a distinct sense of shame, that this was not his place to speak to.

“You know,” he said. “I…we really didn’t know each other that well. I probably know as much as anyone else who read the Daily Prophet with all the coverage she and the Golden Trio got.”

“Yes, but you knew her when she was a child,” said Areenia. “I can’t imagine her as a child.”

Draco squirmed uncomfortably.

“You know my family and I were very much into blood purity right?”

“Of course, everyone knows that about the Malfoys,” said Areenia. “But I’m assuming you weren’t as much into it, given the fact that the Captain wanted to get you here.”

Draco suddenly had a moment of humbling realization. Granger hadn’t told them what a prat he was in school. She didn’t mention how he bullied her, and called her Mudblood, or how he ran like a coward during the Battle of Hogwarts. Much of his major indiscretions had been made public, the grand ones at least, so he was certain most people would glean that he had been a right git at school, but it seemed that Granger wasn’t doing anything to help the assumption along.

“Well,” said Draco with a shrug. “I certainly wasn’t her friend.”

“So you were enemies,” said Areenia, her eyes going wider as though it were a dramatic soap opera of sorts.

“You could say that,” said Draco.

“Was she like she is now,” said Kieran.

“I don’t really know what she’s like now,” admitted Draco.

“You know what I mean,” said Kieran.

Draco sighed and raked a hand through his hair. It was clear that Granger occupied a different space here than she did at Hogwarts. She was their leader, maybe, in some ways, their friends, but certainly not in the way she had been with Potter and Weasley. For even Kieran, who seemed to be rather close to her, there was an air of mystery around her, despite her highly public life as Harry Potter’s best friend and ally.  He didn’t know if it was his place to help them peak behind the curtain.

So he decided to stay safe.

“She was always brilliant,” he said. “An insufferable know-it-all, but she had the best grades in Hogwarts…head was always buried in some ridiculously large and dusty book. So that hasn’t changed, I don’t suppose.”

“No,” said Kieran. “That’s consistent.”

“Was she nice?”

Draco looked at Areenia, and his discomfort grew.

“Uh…yeah…I don’t…yeah of course she followed her dumb friends into every near-death experience they were eager to get their grubby hands on so…but like I said, we weren’t… we didn’t talk a lot.”

“Well what good are you then,” said Kieran. “We wanted to hear fun stories about our brilliant and terrifying captain, and you come up with nothing.”

“Sorry,” said Draco with a shrug. He looked down into the pretty swirling liquid in his cup, before looking up with a sigh. “Fine,” he said. “She did punch me once.”

Areenia’s cup hit the table and she perked up.

“What?!”

Draco nodded.

“Yup,” he said. “She socked me right in the nose.”

“No,” said Areenia. “So, you guys really weren’t friends then.”

“No,” said Draco. “We really weren’t.”

“Did she punch a lot of people,” asked Areenia.

“No,” said Draco shaking his head. “She hexed a lot of Death Eaters, but no she didn’t go around punching her peers, I was a special exception.”

“Did you tell them how much you deserved it, Draco?”

The group let out a yelp of surprise and turned to see Rowen and Hermione walking into the kitchen. Rowen made a bee-line to Areenia, who opened her arms to her and brought her in for an embrace a kiss.

“I was getting to that part Granger,” said Draco, recovering from their sudden appearance.

Granger snorted and sat down next to Kieran on a barstool.

“Drink, Captain,” he asked, pushing his cup over to her.

She shook her head, and reached into her pocket.

“How was the raid,” asked Areenia.

Rowen laughed. “It wasn’t so much a raid as it was a singles mixer for like-minded individuals…”

“What,” asked Kieran, looking from Rowen to Granger.

“Yeah,” said Granger. “It was an interest meeting more than it was anything else, but there were some delicious cookies…”

“Blood snacks, Captain,” said Rowen. “I’m shocked you partook.”

Granger rolled her eyes, but went on, reaching into her pocket.  “We have literature if anyone wants to join Voldemort’s Youth....”

She put the pamphlets on the table. Kieran took one and so did Draco.

“Pureblood Prejudice,” read Kieran. “The Secret Plot to Replace Purebloods Forever.”

“Halfbloods and Muggle Borns,” Draco muttered, reading off the bright green text. “What do when they come to your neighborhood.”

Draco looked around the table, and then back at Granger.

“Honestly Grang…Captain..er…”

“Granger, is fine,” she said abruptly. “That’s more of a term of endearment from this lot,” she said, jerking her head toward them.

“Right,” said Draco, continuing. “This,” he said holding up the pamphlet, “is a lot more tame than what used to be in those circles.”

“That’s the problem, Draco,” she said, and he suddenly felt like he was back in charms class listening to Hermione correct someone. “That’s how they are going to get young new recruits in this world, and it’s how they are going to regain any amount of power. They can’t come out of the gate talking about genocide, not after…not after everything that’s happened.”

“It’s the frog in the pot, analogy,” said Kieran, his tone slightly less severe. “Usually it takes a lot of groundwork to get to the point where someone wants to exterminate a whole population- you start with small changes in your words, creating a sense of victimization and fear, small changes in legislation. Death Eaters 2.0 have an entirely different world to build.”

“Same shit different name,” said Hermione, with a bitter laugh. “Except now we can’t accuse Ministry officials of being willfully ignorant, when your hate flies under the radar it’s harder to call out. When someone calls you a Mudblood, you know exactly where you stand with them. When someone calls you a drain on magical resources, well…that’s a little harder to fight, especially when they mean the exact same thing.”

Draco shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Granger had always been passionate, it was not uncommon to see her drone on about something of great interest to her, and only her. But the way she was speaking now, there was something behind the words, as though what she was saying was the difference between life and death.

The kind of think he felt like he couldn’t roll his eyes at, even though that remained his initial instinct the moment he felt like Granger was settling in for a long speech. And he could see, in that moment, why people followed Granger.

Her intensity was not fabricated, it was something dearly felt.

For her, it was the difference in life and death.

That had never been something he could appreciate, until recently.

“And god, they were all so damn young,” she said.

Kieran raised his eye brows in a sympathetic gesture. “Yeah, kind of drives a stake through the heart for all the ministry verbiage that, “it’s a dying generation, too set in their ways.””

Granger sighed and then suddenly turned toward Draco. For some reason, he found himself sitting up straighter. 

“Draco,” she said. “What do you know about the Rowle Family.”

Draco’s face twisted into a sneer, before he could stop it.

“Thorfinn Rowle,” he said. “Slimy, wicked git, even as far as Death Eaters go. Dumb as a rock. Currently locked in Azkaban.”

“And his brother?”

Draco mulled it over in his head. There was so much crossover in the pureblood family, it was hard to keep them all straight.

“Ummm….Dorman,” he said slowly, recalling the family tree. “He wasn’t a Death Eater but he was sympathetic, he financed a lot stuff for us…them…I never really was able to speak to him, but they were all a trusted family. Some people kept their distance out of self-preservation, in case Voldemort lost. Dorman was not one of those, he kept his distance so that he could work things on the legitimate side.”

“Okay,” she said. “And Eckles?”

“Olaf Eckles?”

Granger nodded and looked down at his drink.

“Yeah I know him.”

“Of course,” said Granger. “You’re father he…”

“He tried his damndest to keep Lord Malfoy out of Azkaban,” said Draco, letting out a long sigh. “Got pretty damn close too. Why? Was he there trolling for young Death Eaters to bed?”

Granger let out a small laugh and shook her head. “No, but his son sure as hell was ready to take Rowen home.”

Areenia looked at Rowen, and gave a look of fake hurt.

“Sweet-heart,” she said. “How could you?”

“What can I say,” she said. “I’m a sucker for blood-supremacist dick.”

“Uh huh,” said Areenia, leaning in for a kiss, which Rowen granted with out argument.

“Okay,” said Hermione. “That’s quite enough.”

Rowen fake pouted, and leaned in to Areenia with an affectionate grin.

“Come on boss,” she said. “We could have died tonight.”

Granger raised an eyebrow.

“Truly,” said Rowen. “There were like 120 people in that room! If they found out…”

“Oh please,” said Hermione. “I’d wager most of those children their couldn’t properly Transfigure a coat rack. We were perfectly safe.”

“Still,” said Rowen, pushing away from the bar and pulling on Areenia’s arm. “Being so close to death really makes me want to feel alive.”

“Yeah me too,” said Areenia.

“Fine,” said Hermione, rolling her eyes. “Get out of here before I start enforcing a no fraternizing rule.”

“Well,” said Rowen. “What do you expect us to do, we can’t exactly date like normal people.”

Granger made a waving motion with her hand, sending them hurrying out of the room, hand in hand.

“So,” said Draco. “They’re dating, I reckon.”

“Well spotted,” said Kieran. “I can see why you brought him on Captain.” He turned to Draco. “And I wouldn’t call it dating.  It’s hard to get out and do normal dating around here. I supposed it’s the undercover terrorist version of dating.”

“Sorry,” said Hermione. “I can’t cater to everyone’s personal life and take down the world’s rising evil at the same time. I’m not a goddess.”

Draco’s eyes widened slightly, and he looked down at the table, embarrassed by the physical reaction that the word “goddess” provoked from him. He quickly recovered and looked back up, before either could notice.

“Yeah,” said Kieran. “Just a hard ass.”

Granger rolled her eyes and pushed herself away from the bar.

“I’m going to bed,” she said.

She turned to walk away, and in a moment Draco knew he would replay over and over again in his head, he asked, “Here?”

He regretted it as soon as he said it, and immediately felt his ears.

“Jesus, Draco,” muttered Kieran.

Hermione for her part, was fixing him with a gaze that he couldn’t quite place.

“Well,” he said, trying not to sound defensive. “I just…I meant I clearly don’t know what the set up is around here since I’ve been confined to one room. I’m assuming there are other Safe Houses given the expansive network.”

Granger cocked her head, slightly to the side, still looking at him, before she nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “We have three in fact. But this one is closest to London so I often stay here.” She paused and looked at him, and he could have swore he was seeing the beginning of a smile. “Is that all right with you Draco?”

Draco considered his next move. He didn’t quite know what kind of relationship he had with Granger. She wasn’t his friend, she was, in name and function, her commanding officer in guerilla army warfare. But he wasn’t just like everyone else either. She wasn’t a symbol shrouded in mystery, that dripped command. He wasn’t sure if she could ever be that to him, anymore than she could ever be intimidated by him.  He couldn’t talk to her as he did in school, but he also couldn’t talk to her as if he only knew her in this capacity. So he went an entirely different direction, one that may or may not get him hexed into oblivion.

“Oh,” he said, leaning back in his chair and looking her in the eye. “It’s more than alright with me…Captain.”

And for a moment he saw Hermione. Her brow furrowed, and her eyes narrowed in a scowl and a blush crept over her nose.

“Sod off, Malfoy.”

She said before turning and walking out of the room. When she was gone Kieran turned toward Draco.

“What the fuck was that about,” he asked.

“What,” asked Draco shrugging innocently.

“I thought you said you guys were enemies.”

“Oh we were…” he said, standing to his feet.

“Then what the hell was the weird flirting about you git?”

“What,” asked Draco. “You heard her, fraternizing is, as of now, allowed.”

“Oh,” said Kieran, letting out a laugh. “And you just thought you’d stroll in on your first day and try and “fraternize” with the Captain? Damn. I knew Malfoy’s were arrogant but this an unprecedented level of fuckery.”

“Is this your way of telling me to keep my hands to myself?”

“No,” said Kieran, shaking his head and standing. “That’s my way of telling you to fraternize with someone a little more attainable.” He gave him a sympathetic pat on the back, before stretching out and yawning. “I’m going to bed now.”

Draco was still glairing at him.

“Unattainable?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve beem with her for four years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her talk to a man except to order them around. Well, besides me.”

 “Some of us like to be ordered around,” he said, pressing the tip of his tongue to his canine and raising an eyebrow suggestively. 

“Trust me,” said Kieran. “The only fraternizing you’ll have time for is with your own right hand.”

Draco laughed. “Well it’s done me well enough the last year I suppose.”

When Kieran exited the kitchen, Draco exhaled and looked around, suddenly exhausted.  It was a long day; a long interesting day. He had a chance, an opportunity, given to him by Granger of all people, and he wasn’t sure who he wanted to be yet. None of his old persona’s felt right, not completely. There were elements of each that reflected an honest part of who he was, but they had been mixed with so many things for all his life. And now he had a chance to sort it out.

But, that left him in a place of behaving like an idiot, vacillating between extreme uncertainty and intense priggishness. He wasn’t used to this feeling of uncertainty. But he supposed for the next few weeks, maybe months, that would simply be his life.

Of course, it didn’t help that his ridiculous, ever so fleeting, schoolboy crush on Hermione, the one which he had mercilessly beat out of himself, knowing it was insanity to entertain something so…unnatural- had suddenly come rushing back into memory.

######

Ginny rolled over in bed and moaned against the light coming from the other side of the bed.

“Harry…”

“I know,” he said, flipping through the pages of his notebook, scrawling down notes, his head went back and forth between his notebook and a folder in his lap.

“You know,” said Ginny, reaching up plucking the pencil out of his mouth. “The studious nerd look works for me, but not when I have to be up for 5:30 am practice and it’s 2 in the morning.”

Harry let out a sigh and moved his glasses up into his thick, unkempt hair, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s just a lot going on at the Ministry and I…”

“…The Sordidum?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s some of it. Some of the higher ups in the Ministry are trying to get us to divert more attention to that. They say that they are just encouraging violence on the side of the blood supremacists, accusing them of stoking division and all that.”

Ginny sat up, so her back was pressed against the headboard and she moved closer to Harry.

“Are they wrong?”

“I don’t know,” said Harry. “Clearly, I don’t think it’s ideal or it’s what I would be doing. But…I don’t know that they should be our priority when there are literal Death Eaters out in the world, and now that Voldemort has gone his ideas seem to have gained legs. We got word of groups in the States, in Brazil, and in Nigeria that are rallying around Voldemort, some campaigning successfully for position of power in their Ministries.”

Ginny closed her eyes tight.

She had wanted more for Harry than this. She had hoped that the worst was behind him, that Voldemort was a name that would be preserved only in history books.

“I don’t understand how that’s true…”

“People have short memories,” said Harry with a shrug. “Especially those who weren’t there to see it happen.”

Ginny reached over and laced her fingers with Harry, raising his hand and pressing it to her lips. She could see Harry sigh, his body unraveling from its coiled state. He closed the folder, and the notebook, and placed them aside.

“Something’s coming Ginny,” he said. “I know it. Even at the Ministry. Shacklebolt is doing what he can, but as long as they aren’t advocating for open hostility, they are able to gather and recruit all they want. There are people younger than us running around with Dark Marks on their arms, Ginny.”

“Are they violent? Is their violence happening against Muggle borns?”

“None that we can prove…but it turns out we don’t have to prove it because by the time we get there for questioning they are all dead.”

“Right,” said Ginny, trying to keep her voice and face impassive. “Right…” she leaned her head on Harry’s shoulder. “It’s her isn’t it…It’s Hermione.”  

“We still don’t have proof, but yes, I’m quite certain.”

Ginny squeezed her eyes shut and shivered.

“God I miss her,” she said, her voice quaking more than she meant for it too. Harry and Ron had been devasted when she left. Ginny had moved from rage, rage at seeing the mess that Hermione had left behind for her to clean up, and grief for what Hermione was going through. And through it all, she missed her friend. While the bond between Harry, Ron and Hermione was something all together unique, Hermione had been her friend too.

“Yeah,” said Harry. “Under any other circumstance I’d say, “Hermione would know what to do.””

Ginny turned toward him and cupped his face in her hand, stroking her thumb along his jaw. The tired look in his eyes made her ache.

“I wish that I knew what to do,” she said, running her hand over his forehead, soothingly. “I wish I could make things easier for you.”

Harry smiled and leaned closer to her, pressing his forehead to hers.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “When I married you I… I thought… I thought that the world would be safer, better. There’s so much I want to go give you, and…”

Ginny’s brow furrowed in a look of amusement.

“Harry,” she said. “Do you think if I wanted a simple, predictable life that I would have married Harry freakin’ Potter? I didn’t expect you to become a different person after the war. You’re the same Harry, running toward the fire when everyone else is running from it.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You’re the man I want. You’re the man I want our children to be like.”

Ginny knew she couldn’t make things better for Harry. But she could do this. She could kiss him, hard and insistent. She could make sure he slept and ate, the same way he did for her when she got stressed or busy. It wasn’t like at Hogwarts where they could run off for every adventure that came their way. They had jobs and responsibilities, and suddenly it felt like being a grown up made doing the right thing so much harder


	4. Punch Like A Mudblood

Andrew DeMoss felt the itch of excitement on his forearm, the newly carved dark mark was healing nicely. He had proven himself time and time again, despite his youth. He was elated to be trusted with such an important mission, one that could change the tide of the wizarding world as they know it. 

He clutched the letter in one hand and his wand in the other as he moved through the quiet, dark streets. He could not be seen but he must also be fast- Rowl would be waiting for him, so he mustn't dally.

He didn’t know what the letter held, he dared not look, knowing the fail-safe's set in place by his superiors. But he knew it was important. Eckles had made that clear.

He approached the grand house, that smelled of purity and old money. He looked over his shoulder one more time and then pressed his wand to the door. 

It responded by yielding, offering him entrance to the grand foyer that led toward a wide staircase. He looked up to find the portraits all regarding him with an air of imperious superiority. 

“This way young friend.”

Andrew turned toward a sitting room to the left, where Damon Rowle was sitting, a book spread out in his lap, a pipe hanging from his lips. 

“Come in,” he said, jovially. “Don’t be shy.”

Andrew hurried toward him, his stance and gaze diminutive. 

“Come now my boy,” he said. “No need to stand on airs. Please have a seat.” 

Andrew tried to calm himself down, as he took the seat across from Rowl. He closed his book and set it aside. 

“Would you like some tea,” he asked.

Andrew shook his head. “Uh, no sir...no..I mean...Thank you, sir…”

“Are you quite certain? I can have a house elf whip some of up in two shakes of a centaurs tale.”

“I’m all right,” said Andrew. “But it’s an honor, sir.” He kicked himself inwardly. Perhaps it was rude to turn down an offer of tea with one of the great remaining pureblood names. 

“All right then,” said Rowle, holding out his hand. “Then I suppose straight to business?”

Andrew hurriedly reached into his pocket and produced the letter, stamped shut with Olaf’s seal.

Andrew assumed Rowl would then dismiss him, but he had not, so Andrew remained in the high-backed seat, waiting patiently as Rowl opened the letter and began reading through it.

Andrew kept his eyes down, so as not to be accused of snooping.

“Andrew,” said Rowl, looking up from the letter, a glint of something jolly in his eyes. “Do you know what this is?” He held up the letter.

“No sir,” said Andrew. “I just know it was important that we get it to you.”

“Indeed,” said Rowle with a smile. “It is of the utmost importance.” He shook the letter at him, in emphasis. “Why did you join us, Andrew?”

“Sir?”

“I know Olaf has nothing but good things to say about you,” said Rowl. “I’m curious, why did you join us?”

Andrew breathed in deeply. There were more reasons than he could say, more than he could articulate. His hand clasped instinctively around the Dark Mark, as though he would draw strength from it.   
“Magic is precious,” he said, his voice low. “There was once a time when everyone knew that. It was never meant for Muggles, never. The only reason Muggles have access is because some pureblood defiled themselves at some point in history. It’s us...it’s always us, we are the fountainhead. And now…” his voice quivered with passion, hot angry tears prickled the back of his throat. “And now they want to replace us all together. As if Mudbloods would even have their magic if it wasn’t for us. That’s wrong, sir. It’s wrong. And the Dark Lord knew this, and I want to make sure that his legacy is carried on.”

Rowle looked at him for a moment, contemplatively, before nodding.

“You’re the future boy,” he said. “You know that?” He stood and crossed the room, his eyes locking on a family portrait. Andrew looked at the youngest boy in the portrait, despite the contrast in ages, he could tell that it was Damon. “The Ministry wants everyone to believe that we are dying breed. That if we just wait for this group to die, everything will be okay.” He smiled and turned to look at Andrew. “We will let them think that for now, it’s to our advantage that they don’t realize how far of a reach we have, how there is a whole group of disenfranchised young men and women like yourself, who still know the truth.”

Andrew nodded, not sure what to say. Rowle turned back toward the portrait and nodded again, this time, it seemed, more to himself.   
“The tide is changing, Andrew,” he said. “They won’t be able to hold us back for long.”

 

#####

When Andrew was gone, Rowle placed the letter on his desk, the contents committed to memory. He ascended the stairs smoothly, carried by the sensation of walking on air. He followed the halls of his childhood to a room, a room where many a Rowle child had slept. 

He took out his wand and tapped it to the door, disarming the traps that set should the door be opened by anyone other than him or his wife. He could hear a little voice inside, caught up in her play. He slowly opened the door and peeked inside. 

At first, the little girl didn’t notice as she marched her enchanted toys on the floor in front of her, her wand dancing and directing them as though she were a conductor. He watched her for a moment and marveled at the magic in her veins. So powerful he could feel it from almost anywhere in the house.

He would have to strengthen the spells soon, she was not far away from being able to dismantle them on her own, despite her young age. 

“Isn’t almost time for bed, sweetheart?”

The girl whipped around, and, as it always did, her looks made his heart clench. She looked so much like them, black untamed hair, strong jaw, and dark, flashing eyes. There was a power and an innocence in her gaze that never failed to disorient.

“I’m playing, papa,” she said. 

“I can see that.” 

He leaned down to scoop her up. She fought him for a moment, before yielding and nestling her head against his neck. 

“You’re getting big,” he said.

“Bigger every day,” she concurred. 

He smiled and held her tight. It would not be much longer. He knew what he would have to do. It didn’t matter that he had grown fond of her, all that mattered was the Dark Lord’s wishes. And soon there would be enough to see those plans come to fruition.   
The little girl sighed contentedly as he placed her in the bed. 

It would need to be soon no matter what. Much longer and the child would be too powerful to hold, and soon, surely, she would cease to be such a contended prisoner.

But for now, she slept. Happy to have toys, food, and a bed to sleep in. He tucked the blanket up high around her and then leaned in to kiss her cheek.

“Good night,” he said. “My little Delphi.”

 

####

 

“I look ridiculous...”

“You always look ridiculous...”

Draco sighed deeply, turning the rubber headgear in his hands and squishing it experimentally.

“I just don’t see why this is necessary.”

“Because,” said Kieran. “If you're useless without your wand than your useless to us.”  He put on his own headgear, “and from all I’ve heard you can’t take a punch or throw a punch.”

Draco scowled angrily at him. “I was in 3rd year,” he spat. “I’ve toughened since then. And if you remember I was on the run from death eaters in the past year- I learned to scrap.”

“Uh huh,” said Kieran skeptically. “Than stand up and show me what you got, kid.”

Draco didn’t like doing things he wasn’t good at. Years of being berated by his father for failing and praised for succeeding taught him to stay away from things he wasn’t completely certain he would succeed at.

This was something he was certain he wasn’t good at. He was a good flyer, a good dueler, he found he was particularly skilled at stretching a week's worth of food over a month. Fighting, with his fists, while some of it seemed instinctual, he wasn’t convinced he could throw a punch without breaking his fists. Luckily, broken fists could be fixed.

He stood up and took a natural stance in front of Kieran.

“Get your hands up,” said Kieran. “Gotta protect the money maker.”

Draco nodded and lifted his hands, covered in black fingerless gloves that protected his knuckles

“I feel like a muggle,” he muttered.

“I don’t care how you feel, I care that your ass isn’t handed to you by a wizard, muggle or anything in between.”

Draco stepped forward and was immediately sent reeling back onto his back, with a throbbing in his face and a ringing in his ears. He blinked upward at Kieran who was standing over him, his gloved hands held up.

“All right?”

Draco squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.

“Then get back up.”

*****

 

Hermione looked down at the parchment, her scrawling looping handwriting filling it from top to bottom. She gave it one more read, checking for spelling errors and mistakes, assuring that it included everything she needed. It would be a good start. She wasn’t prepared to put Draco on a mission... not yet.

But he could certainly do this, it was about the only impression that Draco left on her that was good, and it was something she did not have time for.

She folded it carefully and put in her pocket, before looking down at her map. Every time she used it, she grew a bit nostalgic, she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t the same map, though it was powered by the same magic, and she couldn’t use it without remembering times of being crowded under that cloak, following the footprints left there. 

She could see Kieran was with Draco in their little makeshift fighting rink. She apparated right outside the makeshift gym, inside she could hear the sound of rubber hitting rubber, of straining, and grunts of pain. Kieran was not an easy partner, but he was careful not do any permanent damage. 

She went inside and made her way over to the rink, neither of the men noticed her. It was clear that Draco had taken the majority of the punishment, but Kieran was careful to stop and give him advice, and correct anything that could get him hurt.

Hermione assumed, rightly it would seem, that his fighting skills were concentrated in dueling, but she also knew he was athletic, so it wouldn’t take him long to get some basic under his belt. 

She wasn’t looking for professional athletes anyway, just someone who could hold their own, with or without a wand.

“Captain,” said Kieran, holding out his mitted hand to stop Draco. Draco relaxed and moved away from Kieran and turned toward her. “What’s up?”

Hermione moved closer to the rink, she reached to retrieve the parchment. 

“Don’t rough him up too bad,” she said, a teasing warning in her voice. 

“Come on,” he said, taking a drink of water. “I don’t rough up.”

Hermione’s eyes widened in faux disbelief, as she pointed to her own nose.

“Twice,” she said. “Not once, but twice.”

“Fine,” said Kieran, pulling back on the velcro of one of his gloves and throwing it at her. “You do it then if your worried about me breaking the guy's nose.”

“Not worried,” she said throwing it back. “I just don’t have time heal it and Jacee is in Spain visiting her family so we don’t have a healer at this house.”

“Then we better be careful,” he said throwing it back at her, hard. “Besides,” said Kieran. “All that time behind a desk is making you rusty.”

She knew she should be above being bated by her own people. She knew that her damned competitiveness could not be the loudest thing in her head anymore, but, sometimes, every now and again, she liked to let it come out and play.

“Fine,” she said. 

“Round two, huh Granger,” asked Draco, the confidence in his voice provoking her further. 

“Please,” she said, climbing into the rink, and taking Kieran’s headpiece, and then shoving her fist into one of his sweaty gloves, magically shrinking them around her wrist. “This is me teaching you,” she said. “This isn’t me wanting to kick your ass again. Besides, it’s good for our male recruits to practice on a woman.”

He looked at her, confused for a moment.

“Trust me,” said Kieran. “It’s harder than you think. Using spells on witches is one thing, there’s distance, punching one…” he shrugged. “It’s a little harder.” 

“And you’ll have too,” said Hermione. “Because some of your most vicious assailants will be women.” 

Draco nodded.

Hermione assumed Draco never struggled with hexing a woman, but even at his worst, she doubted he had ever put his hands on a woman. 

Although, she imagined he would have made an exception for her if he had been given the chance. After all, he had wished death on her second year. When she was geared up, she turned toward Draco.

He was bigger than her and, she assumed, stronger. Her athleticism was hard won, through practice and letting Kieran hand her ass to her on a platter over and over again. But the point right now was not to be the best, it was to teach a soldier, not a settle a score with a childhood enemy. 

She reminded herself of this as she quickly moved across the rubber surface toward Draco.

“Gotta watch her Draco,” said Kieran. “She’s quick like a chicken.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, as Draco moved backward out of dodge.

“You just gonna run from her the whole time,” asked Kieran.

“If it keeps me alive then I would think yes,” yelled Draco, his Quidditch skills taking over as Hermione through a weaker punch toward him, he maneuvered out of the way easily. Hermione grew irritated as they moved like this for a few more minutes.

Draco, the Draco she knew growing up, was a weasel, but she thought she could at least rely on him to be aggressive. 

She threw another punch, this time harder and faster, catching him hard on the side of the head. He staggered backward and then straightened, looking at her surprised. She met his gaze with her own hard one.  To her satisfaction, his eyes narrowed in annoyance.

This time he moved in on her. His stance was clumsy, but he made up for it with speed and strength. He threw a fist, finally, not quick enough, but she could see the force behind it. 

“There ya go,” said Kieran. “Don’t be afraid to make her bleed, kid.”

Hermione didn’t respond.

“He’s right,” she said. “If you can’t even make your mortal enemy bleed…”

Draco moved out of the way of one her punches. 

“Please, Granger,” he breathed. “There are a lot more people ahead of you on that list.”

“Really,” she said, leaning back, narrowly avoiding his fist, and stumbling backward. “I’m offended.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “What can I say, you really slacked on your duties as my arch nemesis after fourth year.”

“Fourth year?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You know after Voldemort came back, family duties became more pressing.”

“Right,” she said, moving out of the way of his hand. While it was still outstretched she wrapped her fingers around his forearm and jerked him forward in front of her, catching his leg with hers, and sending him spilling to the ground. “Those years certainly did take their toll on you. You got all thin and sickly.”   
He stood up quickly and came back at her, this time with more intensity in his step. He threw another quick jab, this time catching her on the side her face mask. She could see him tentatively pause as if he wasn’t sure that that was okay, but a shout of encouragement from Kieran cleared it up. 

“I’m flattered you noticed, Granger,” he said. 

“We all did,” she said. This time he caught her around the wrist, but she easily pulled herself free. “That was the year you started wearing the fetching black muggle suits.”

“Not muggle,” he said, with a laugh. “You lot don’t get first dibs on any clothes that aren’t wizarding robes.”   
“I think we do,” she said, surprising him with a quick snap kick to the chest, and then lunging forward with a jab to his head. He stumbled back into the ropes around the rink, catching himself.

“She likes the feet,” said Kieran. “Gotta watch for that.”

Hermione could see his hesitancy melting away with every advance he made on her when that began to happen his athleticism was able to carry him further than he had been letting it.  The truth was, it wasn’t long before many of the recruits surpassed her in physical fighting. It didn’t bother her though. She knew her strengths and her weakness, and anytime her weaknesses could be compensated for in someone else, that was a win.

Suddenly, his fist made contact with her face, a knuckle hitting her nose. She jerked back, it wasn’t broken, but she could taste blood. 

She looked up at Draco, who seemed unbothered, hands still raised, silvery grey eyes filled with intensity from behind loose strands of his white hair. She fought back the tiny smile. 

But…

She couldn’t have him getting a big head too fast.

She advanced quickly, ignoring the taste of blood on her lips. She dodged a punch and brought her knee up into his stomach, making him double over as she knocked the breath out of him. She took advantage of that grabbing him by the shoulders and flinging him to the ground. She went down with him, pinning him to the mat easily. 

She moved to stand, but she found herself held there, somewhere in the fall his hand had wrapped instinctively around her forearm. She looked at it for a moment, the stark contrast was disorienting. He had always been pale, but she had never seen it this close before, and never so close to her own brown skin. She pulled her eyes away from his hand and back to his face. 

He was looking at her, strangely, a look she didn’t quite know what to do with. The intensity remained as his eyes darted across her face, but it was a different sort as if he were searching for something, or trying to figure something out of great importance. She was suddenly, very aware of her body, and of its position, a burning flush crept up her neck and to her cheeks as she hurriedly rolled off of him and scooted a few inches away from him.

“Alrighty,” she said, then immediately kicked herself mentally. She quickly removed her headgear, letting her hair spring free, and then hurriedly unstrapped her gloves. “I’ll be seeing you both…”

She moved to hurry out of the rink.

“Granger,” she turned toward Draco, who was sitting up and looking at her, curiously.    
“What,” she snapped, more cranky than she meant.

“Did you...did you need something, or was the reason you came down here in the first place to kick my ass?”

“Oh, right,” she said, she felt in her pocket for the folded piece of parchment. She plopped down back on the mat next to him and held it out for him. “You able to keep up with your potions at all?”

He looked at her, confused for a moment, before reaching out for the parchment.

“A bit…”

“Up for a bit of experimenting?”   
He unfolded the parchment and looked over it for a moment, and then back at her.    
“These are common ailments, common needs, things that would be much easier if we had a potion to do it for us,” she said. “Think you can play around a bit and see if any of it’s possible.”

He held her gaze for a moment and then nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can do that, Granger.”   
She nodded and looked away, once again feeling the urge to run. 

“All right,” she said. “Thank you.”

She scolded herself again. She was not a tyrant, but she rarely said thank you, unless it was highly earned, to her people. They had assignments, they did them. It was what kept things moving.

It was the fact that he was Draco, that she went to school with him, that he knew her when she was just one of Harry Potters wingmen. 

It made it so much more complicated. 

She moved toward the edge of the rink, ready to excuse herself, when she was out, while Draco was removing his own gear, Kieran leaned in close to her.

“So just so I’m clear,” he said. “When I fight Draco should I also straddle him like a pony, and share long lingering touches.”

“I will hex you, Kieran,” she said. “I will hex you so...damn...hard…”

He held up his hands and backed away, but the smirk remained. 

Hermione hurried out of the room, not looking back. 


	5. Read My Mind

 

Draco still felt the tingling in his fingers after she had hurried from the room. He shook his head and stood, shaking his hand out. 

Get it together, he scolded himself inwardly. You came here to fight. To do some fucking good in your miserable life, not wax poetically about electric touches.

He looked down at the parchment.

The long...completely filled up...parchment. 

He laughed and shook his head. It was nice, the sort of thing that reminded him he wasn’t living in an alternate reality when he could see a little glimpse of the person he remembered her to be. 

They were the beginning of ideas, things that may not even be possible.  But he found himself quite excited by the idea of being able to try something new, to fiddle around with a cauldron and different ingredients until something came up.

Her list included some things he was already sure he could do; potions to counteract the impacts of certain spells, salve's to mend skin and broken bodies, flame retardant oils and so on; but the others...potions to regrow lost limbs and skin, potions to restore sight lost under certain hexes, potions to dull pain under intense torture. Those were like asking him for a miracle.

And something about her asking him for a miracle made him feel like he had moments ago when he was caught in the gaze of her honeyed eyes.

“Hey…”

Kieran’s voice snapped his eyes away from the parchment and toward him. 

“You gunna spend the rest of your day in there or what?”

Draco stood and jogged across the rink, slipping under the ropes and onto the floor.

“Is there a place where I can work on this,” he asked, holding up the parchment.

“Yeah,” he said. “Most of our ingredients for stuff like that is in the basement.” He squinted at the paper and then back at Draco. “Were you a nerd or something in school too?”

Draco snatched the paper out of sight and shook his head.

“I most certainly was not,” he said. “I just had a knack for the precision work of potions, that’s all.”

“Mmmhmmm,” muttered Kieran, unconvinced. 

“Well I’ll show you where the basement is,” he said. “But you’re on your on your own. I can’t stand the smell of that place.”

For the first time in a long time, Draco felt a flickering, ever-so-small, feeling of freedom.

 

######

 

3 Months Later

 

Draco squinted into the cauldron of bubbling liquid, an earthy aroma wafted up from the surface. The smell itself was not horrible, but the thick, grainy appearance was off-putting all on its own.

He didn’t notice the sound of the door opening or the creak of the stairs that led to the basement. It wasn’t until she was right next to him that he even noticed her.

“Kieran told me to come find you,” she said, looking into the cauldron. He looked up briefly, back to the cauldron, and then back to her in shock.

“Bloody hell, Granger,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and pulling her away from the cauldron over to one of his shelves. He looked up again at her purple, swollen eye. “Things went well, I guess?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was a little half-assed, there were more Death Eaters than we thought…” She winced slightly as he dabbed a bit of a yellow salve onto her eye. “Someone got recognized, and there were muggles nearby... there were a lot of unforeseen circumstances, but we all made it back okay.”

“There you go,” he said after the purpling skin was covered completely. “You’ll be as good as new in two minutes.”

“Thanks,” she said, smiling brightly at him, then she held out her hands. “Do you also have something for dry hands?

He rolled his eyes and nodded his head toward the cauldron. 

“Come on,” he said. 

She followed him over to the cauldron, tucking her hair behind her ears and tying it back.

“What is this?”

“Something that will prove once and for all that I was, in fact, the smartest student at Hogwarts, and you were just a teacher's pet.”

“I’m sure,” she said.  “Tell me what it is.”

He lifted a ladle out and poured into a cup.

“Okay,” he said. “Now I just need you to trust me on this one.”

She nodded without a thought and accepted the cup.

“All right,” he said. “I’m assuming you know how to extract a memory?”

She nodded, slowly. 

“Yeah…”

“Okay, like I said…trust me.”

He pulled his wand out of his back pocket and held it up to his temple, extracting the silvery substance, and then dropping it into her cup. 

“What the hell…”

He held out his cup toward her, wiggling it in her direction.

“Come on Granger,” he said. “Years of brewing polyjuice in a bathroom and suddenly your shy about drinking weird things.”

She rolled her eyes but tossed the drink back without further objection. She felt the thick substance in her mouth and then swallowed it. 

“Okay,” she said. “What’s it supposed to…”

*Jesus Granger, don’t you have any patience*

He smiled as her eyes widened in realization.

“Draco what…”   
*Yup*

“You’re not...I can...are you in my head?”

*More like you’re in mine, Granger*

He watched as she stood there for a moment, and then looked at him expectantly.

*If you’re trying to talk to me telepathically, it would only work two ways if I drank one mixed with one of your memories*

She let out a thoughtful breathe, as she considered what he said. 

She let out a small sincere laugh that took Draco back, ever so slightly.

“I based it off of the pensieve,” he said. “It’s, in many ways, the same principle, a few tweaks, and additions and we basically have…”

“Telepathy,” she whispered, looking down into the cauldron. She shook her head, and then looked back up at him, a disarming smile on her face. “That’s amazing, Draco. Really.” He looked away, unsure what to do with the level of sincerity in her voice. “You may just be a genius after all.”

“See, Granger,” he said, shaking his head with mock disappointed. “Here I was thinking you wanted me around for my face, but it turns out all your interested in is my brain.”

She rolled her eyes, but her smile hadn’t fallen. She bent at the waist, putting herself closer to the cauldron, so she could see the liquid bubbling inside it. 

He made his way over to his desk and picked up his notebook, opened to his notes about the potion, and made his way back to her side, she held the ladle up to eye level.

Yup he had lost her. She was gone, and wouldn’t be coming up…

“Draco do…”

He held out his notebook wordlessly. She wanted to look annoyed, annoyed that, somehow, in his own way, he did know her, he could tell, but she took it from him without a word. 

“I’ll leave you two alone,” he said. He made his way to the stairs. He needed some fresh air anyway.

“Draco,” she called back over her shoulder. 

“Yeah?”

“Tomorrow you’re going with Kieran on a mission.”

He felt his eyes widen involuntarily. 

“Sorry what…”

Hermione nodded.

“It’s just a fact-finding mission,” she said. “No violence for you yet though.”

He didn’t care. Sure he was chomping at the bit to get out there and wreak holy vengeance on a few Death Eaters. But just the prospect of leaving the house was enough to make him smile...almost.

 

##########

 

“He’s ready, isn’t he?”

Kieran flicked his wand, repelling the spell lobbed toward him from Hermione. 

“I’ve been saying he’s ready for the past three months,” he said. “You’re the one treating him with kid gloves.”

She ducked, missing his stinging hex.

“Not kid gloves,” she said. “Confusion and kid gloves are not the same thing. I just don’t know what to do with him.”

“I can see that cap...and honestly never seen you get so flustered about a bloke.”

She let out an angry growl, crossing her wand across her body, sending a flash of blue toward Kieran. He side-stepped and then sent a flurry of white bursts toward her. 

“Not...flustered,” she said through gritted teeth. “Confusion!”

“Come on Captain,” he said. “The only thing you're confused about is whether or not to treat him like every other recruit, or to jump his bones.”

Hermione’s wand fell, for a brief second, as she opened her mouth to scold Kieran, but before she could she was slammed into the wall by one of Kieran’s spells.

“Stay on guard,” said Kieran, sauntering over to her with a smirk. She glared up at him, but she accepted his extended hand all the same. He pulled her easily to her feet. But she continued to glare up at him.

“In case you forgot,” she said. “I am his, and, for that matter, YOUR, commanding officer.”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t forget but you just…” he paused. “Permission to speak freely?”

“Would it matter, if I said no?”

“In this case, it would ma’m,” he said.  Hermione regarded him suspiciously for a moment before nodding her head.

“Go ahead.”

“You just...you seem really tense,” he said. “Like more than usual.”

“Of course I am,” she said. “I’m tense because every rock we turn over is another swarm of Death Eaters. We have at least 5 named in the higher ups of the ministry, all names that we have shared with the ministry, and NOTHING has happened.  We’ve had three casualties in the past week,” she snapped angrily. She wasn’t angry at Kieran, she knew that, but he was there and, right now, he was convenient. 

“I know,” he said, his voice sympathetic. He reached out and placed a hand on Hermione’s shoulder. “I know that. But you’re not going to help anyone if you make yourself sick with anxiety, and stress.”

“Fine,” she said. “And can you tell me what, in the bloody hell, does this have to do with Draco.”

Kieran shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just that maybe...I think if you chatted with him he’d be willing to…you know…”

Hermione felt her jaw clench, and her fists tighten.

“No,” she said. “I must not know, because what it sounds like your hinting at is…”

“I’m pretty sure Malfoy wouldn’t mind serving as a stress ball of sorts.”

Hermione’s eyes widened, and her face flushed red, and she began to sputter out incoherent words that made Kieran step away.

“That is...that is so...it’s just...that is the last...you don’t even...that’s…”

“What,” asked Kieran, crossing his arms. “What is it exactly?”

“Irresponsible,” she shouted, suddenly, louder than she meant. Kieran, in an act she would make sure he one day regretted, burst into laughter.

“Jesus Christ, Captain,” he said. “It’s not like anyone here took a vow of celibacy.”

“Well,” she said. “Maybe I’ll start enforcing one.”

“Sure,” said Kieran. “It’s going to be hard to enforce that from Malfoy’s bed…”

“I don’t even like him!”

“Yeah,” he said. “First, I’m not saying you have to marry him, I’m saying…”

“I know,” she said, holding up her hand. “Please don’t say it again…”

“And also, you do like him.”

She opened her mouth to protest.

“I’m not saying you love him,” he said. “But you like him. He’s a part of the team, and even outside of that you do have a soft spot for him, maybe it’s the Hogwarts things, some piece of your childhood…”

“So that translates to I want to shag him?”

“No,” he said, with a shake of the head. “I just assume you want to shag him because the boys a looker.”

She snorted derisively. But she didn’t object, she knew, rightly, she couldn’t. 

“I know it’s not my…”

“It’s not, “she said, looking back up at him. “And I’ve accepted that I’ve had to give up certain things to do what I do. Is it always fun? No. But it’s what I’ve chosen,” she pointed at herself. She paused, her eyes softening, a painful truth bubbling up into her mouth. “I don’t know how to have both,” she said. “Like Rowen. I don’t know how to have this life and a personal life. I just…”

“You’re single-minded,” finished Kieran. “And that makes you a great leader.” He stepped closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in for a hug. Hermione didn’t protest. They were alone. She knew Kieran wouldn’t behave this way in front of anyone else, besides maybe Rowen. He was right about Draco, but the same could be said of Kieran. He was different, he and Rowen. They were there from the beginning, before the Sordidum existed, before the legend of their leader. They were there when she was a heartbroken young girl, who had every bit of her faith in the people around her shattered, who had walked away from everything. She couldn’t ask them to treat her exactly as she expected everyone else too. “But,” he said. “You’re a good leader if you’re alive and functioning and sane. And yeah, Malfoy stuff aside, you should know you don’t have to give up everything. It’s why you have a team.”

She thought about his words, all of them, even, sadly, his words about Draco. She had no idea what she felt for the man. He was right that it wasn’t simple, whatever it was. There was too much wrapped up in him, too much that was attached to strong feelings. He was this odd, unlikely bridge between who she had been and who she was now. 

And while she was quite certain that Kieran’s advice on how to best cope with her stress was wrong, she wasn’t quite certain how wrong it was. 

 

########

 

Hermione waited up that night. 

Though she told Rowen, it wasn’t for any particular reason. She had work to do after all. It would have been enough for anyone but Rowen. She knew that there was some other reason that Hermione was in the kitchen that night, absently sipping at a Firewhiskey, a book opened in front of her. But, Merlin bless her, Rowen accepted the excuse leaving Hermione to her midnight vigil. 

Hermione was quite certain she would share with Andeera her true reasons for waiting up, but she didn’t grudge her that. They were both blessedly discreet, and minded their own business, unlike Kieran.

But, it turned out, both were healthy to have in her life as close advisors. 

She found herself re-reading the same page five times, never able to finish a sentence before looking at the clock, the snoring portraits alerting her to the late hour. 

When she heard the pop of apparition, in the lobby of the house, she exhaled, and then kicked herself for staying up at all. It had just been a simple fact-finding mission, no reason to get worked up. She wondered if she would be able to sneak into her room without them noticing. 

The thought was not long for this world, as she heard them immediately make their way to the kitchen. She recognized both of their voices, jovial enough, cementing the fact that they were, in fact, fine. 

She looked back down at her book, attempting to make it look like she was being studios, lost in a book, and had no other reason for being awake.

“Captain?”

She jerked up, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that she was pretending to be surprised. 

“Oh,” she said. “Hello.”

Her eyes darted over to Draco, and then back to Kieran. Both were intact.

“What are you doing,” asked Kieran.

She breathed in, reigning in any tendency toward defensiveness that would give way to more questions.    
“Reading,” she said, holding up the book. “You should try it sometimes,” she narrowed her eyes at Kieran. “It’s great for stress release.”

He made a face and walked over to her, picking up her glass of Firewhiskey and finishing it off in one gulp.

“Well,” he said. “Since you’re up, should we debrief the mission.” 

She nodded, closing the book.

“Sure,” she said. “Anything of note.”

“A couple of big names came up, including Rowle…Draco schmoozed with a cute little Death Eater. I think she was angling to ask Draco to go on a date with her.”

She turned toward Draco.

“What did you say?”

She saw Draco’s eyes flicker to Kieran, as though looking for help as to what the appropriate answer was. In all honesty, thoughts of Kieran’s conversation were gone. She was fully the Captain now. 

“I didn’t,” he said. “She didn’t exactly ask me anything. But I told her I’d be looking out for her again.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding and chewing at her lip thoughtfully. “That could be a good lead to follow up on,” she said. “Keep the location in mind.” She turned to Draco. “I’m assuming you transfigured yourself before going?”

“Yes,” he said, somewhat shortly. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Is it a usual disguise,” she asked. “As in one you could easily replicate.”

“Yes,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure I could hook her again, without the disguise…”

Hermione didn’t have time to respond to his self-praise, as the wheels in her head were turning.

“Eckles and Rowle are the two names that keep coming up,” she said. “Anything that gets us closer to that would be amazing, and anything that gets one of us in…” 

“One of us,” asked Draco. “I did all the work on that one.”

She shrugged. 

“Well,” she said. “We’ll see if I think you can handle it.”

She saw his eyes flash angrily, but he didn’t, to his credit, object. He knew when to fight her and when to stand down, at least, in most cases. 

“How was Draco’s potion,” she asked, changing the subject.

“Oh it worked great,” said Kieran. “Made staying in contact a lot easier, obviously. Made leaving together a little less dodgy.”

Hermione picked absently at her cuticle, processing the information, and how to pursue it. 

“Hey…”

She jumped when Draco’s hand grasped her around her wrist. She was about to jerk away when he just pulled her hand away from the thumbnail on her other hand. She looked down to see the spot she had been pulling out was bleeding. 

She hadn’t noticed at all.

Without missing a beat, he quickly jumped back into recounting the night. There was nothing else of much note. They would need to get into spaces again with some of the higher-ups, as all of their leads lately have taken them to clubs and meet-ups for the new generation. 

Hermione felt a stab of guilt. There was information being shared, even not important information could hold the sliver of some clue if she were to look. So why was it that she was wondering about why Draco noticed the small bit of blood on her thumb, and why it felt so natural for him to touch her wrist. 


	6. What's Right?

6 Months Later

 

“A book?”

Ron's mouth formed and tight line and he nodded. 

“And that’s all…”

Ron nodded again, sitting down in his usual seat across from Harry’s desk. This was their life now, and, it wasn’t that it was a bad one, just that it wasn’t the life he imagined for them after Hogwarts. Nothing had gone the way Ron had expected. It had once been him, Hermione and Harry against the world, and now it felt like all they did was put out fires, and then briefly talk about whatever fire it was.

“It’s the only thing that was missing.”

“You’re sure?”

Ron sighed and rubbed his face.

“Yes,” he said, exasperatedly. “They used every spell in the book to make sure and the only thing that went missing was a book.”

“Shit,” muttered Harry. “Do we know which one?”

“That’s the thing isn’t,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a Drooble’s. He would say that was the one thing that had improved; having his own, somewhat regular, supply of Galleons, meant that the days of picking and choosing from the Hogwarts trolley were long gone. “Shaklebolt said that it wasn’t anything spectacular. It was some old diary written by some witch from the States.  It was apparently an early copy, but you can get it at pretty much any Flourish and Blotts in the country.”

“So...there was something about this copy?”

“What it looks like,” said Ron. 

“Which is what?”

Ron shrugged. 

“Shaklebolt said the only reason they have its because it’s really old,” said Ron. “But again, it’s not an artifact or anything, she’s not even a very well known or important witch according to the historians I talked to.”

“Great,” said Harry. “So not only do we have moles in the ministry, we have no idea who they are…”

Ron raised an eyebrow.   
“Come on mate,” said Ron.  “We have some idea.”

“Fine,” said Harry, assentingly. “You’re right we have some ideas, but we can’t prove anything.”

Ron rolled his eyes, the familiar frustration rising.    
“Shaklebolt shouldn’t have let them stay on man,” he said. “We knew they were You-Know-Who sympathizers, everyone knew it, everyone still knows it.”   
“But we can’t fire someone for a hunch, and they haven’t done anything. Eckles, Laertes, Robles, their hands are squeaky clean Ron.”

“Yeah,” said Ron. “So was Jackson Linley…”

Ron regretted it as soon as he said. He saw the flash of anger in Harry’s eyes, quickly chased by a deep sadness. 

He exhaled and dropped his head. “I’m sorry Harry,” he said. “That wasn’t your fault, but…”

“I know,” said Harry. They sat in silence for a moment before Harry looked up again, wearily. “I feel like when we were at Hogwarts it was so easy to know what the right thing was,” he stopped. “When did that change?”

“I don’t think it changed,” he said. “But now we’re on the other side of things. Hell, then I doubt we actually saw how many people were trying to hold it all together from the other side. And now we are trying to hold together everything that we have rebuilt since the war. We just aren’t kids anymore.”

“You know,” said Harry. “It may be time to start looking…”

Ron felt a surge of excitement.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” said Harry. “She’s out there. Like you said. We all know it’s her, and we just...I think if anyone would have an idea why this book was important, it would be Hermione.” 

Ron regarded Harry wearily. “Would she be...who would she be meeting with Ministry Aurors or…”

Harry shook his head.

“Us...just us.”

Ron nodded, satisfied with that answer. He knew it would be difficult, tracking her down. So far she had done a great job all but rubbing it everyone’s faces that she was the leader of the Sordidum. Every search, every mission Ron had a tiny fear in the back of his head that there would be some evidence that confirmed it was Hermione, evidence that he would have to decide what to do with.

Or pretend to be tortured over what to do with it for a few minutes before compromising evidence so no one else would find it.

Harry was right. 

Sometimes knowing what the right thing is much more complicated than he ever thought

 

#####

 

*Granger to your left, right behind you.”

Hermione didn’t even need to look, she sent a stinging spell over her shoulder.

*Do you have the muggles safe, Kieran.*

*Yes, captain, they are all accounted for.*

Hermione let out a sigh of relief and took out her wand. She was seething with anger. The fact that this kept happening, over and over again, made her blood boil.

She ducked out of the way of a killing curse.

*Granger*

She breathed in.

*Granger, calm down. You need your head. We can be angry later*

He was right. She knew he was right. The streets were empty now, windows closed and people having apparated to safety. But they were outnumbered. She had to keep her wits. 

*Rowen*

*Alive, but busy at the moment*

*Areenia*

*With Kieran and Dale*

She nodded, everyone was alive and accounted for. She crouched down behind the upturned bench. She could hear shouted curses, and the sound of spells diverted into buildings. She leaped up into the fray. 

She shot a curse that stopped the heart of the nearest Death Eater, and then another that froze the blood. 

Killing wasn’t hard for her anymore. She sometimes mourned for the girl for whom killing was a last resort, who would have laid up at night, tortured by the lives she took.

Sometimes.

But then she remembered what happened when mercy was dispersed too liberally.

Now, she could kill quickly, efficiently, almost effortlessly.

*AREENIA* 

The shout in her head, momentarily froze her, long enough to feel her wand be shot from her hand.

She whipped around toward the aggressor.

“Mudblood…” questioned the voice, with an air of excitement and disbelief. The one was dull and stupid and familiar.    
“Oh Jesus,” she muttered. She can’t die now, it would be her eternal shame if she was killed by...

“Goyle,” she said, almost cordially. Her eyes found her wand, so she could immediately leap to it at her moment. 

“I knew it was you,” he said, approaching her, his wand stretched out toward her. “I knew it. I said, “I bet my life it’s Granger.” And look here you are.”

“Here I am,” she said. “Any chance you’ll show a little leniency for an old schoolmate?”

He laughed, throwing his head back animatedly.

“Oh you know I wish I could,” he said. “But you know the bossman has a huge bounty on your head, and I’d be set for life in the inner circle if I brought you in.”

“Shame,” she said. “Never hurts to ask.”

Then without skipping a beat, she dropped to her knees as a burst of lights shot past her head toward Goyle. He let out a yelp and jumped away from it. But that was all she needed as she recovered her wand. 

“Granger,” scolded Draco. “You going to sit here and tell me, in this the year of Lord, that Gregory Goyle disarmed you.”

“Fuck off, Draco,” she said. “Go check on Areenia and Kieran. I think they need back up.”

“If you’re sure you can handle Goy…”

“GO!”

He apparated out of sight. 

She knocked Goyle’s wand out of his hand and tossed it to herself, catching it in her free hand. 

She walked over to Goyle, who was moaning on the ground, rubbing his head.

“Coulda swore that was…”

“Malfoy,” asked Hermione. “Yeah, that would be right.”   
He snorted.

“Little bitch went off and joined you.” He growled to himself. “He never did have the stomach to be a Death Eater...never understand why the Dark Lord picked him for...”   
Hermione looked at his wand for a moment before easily breaking it over her knee. 

He let out a cough and looked at her.

“You gunna kill me, Granger?”

She held her wand out.

“Of course I am, Goyle?”

He snorted.

“For all your talk and posturing, you Gryffindors were never much better than us.”

“Spare me the “if you fight back you stoop to their level” speech Goyle,” she said. “I’ve heard it before, and it got my parents killed.”

Goyle let out another laugh.

“Oh that’s right,” he said. He let out a small cough of a laugh and winced in pain. “I forgot about that. The Famous Hermione Granger, brought her parents back, restored their memory, and they not two months later they…”   
The curse shot out from Hermione’s wand before he could finish. Cracks appeared all over Goyle’s face and then, he turned to dust. 

She had heard that all before too. 

She could hear the sound of curses flying on the next street. She hurried over to find her friends surrounded by 14 Death Eaters. 

Areenia was on the ground, Kieran and Rowen were close to her body, blocking it from oncoming curses. Dale and Draco formed the first line of defense. Hermione apparated next to her. She was alive, but her breathing was shallow. She stood, and then dropped to her knees again. 

*I’m apparating Areenia out of here*

*Heard Captain*

*I’ll be back*

*No need, Granger.  We got this*

She rolled her eyes and apparated out with Areenia back to the house. She laid Areenia’s body on the couch in the living room, planting a quick kiss on her forehead. “Don’t die.”

And in a flash, she was back on the battlefield, outside the circle. She managed to take out three before they noticed that they were being attacked on both sides. 

She leaped out of the way as a bombardo spell brought the wall behind her down. 

Draco let out a yelp of pain as a hex caught him in the shoulder, sending his wand flying from his hand and into the waiting grasp of a Death Eater.

*Draco*

*Got it*

Hermione sprinted toward the Death Eater, and tossed her wand to Draco, guiding it to him with wandless magic. As soon as he had it he used it to slash a bloody line across the Death Eaters chest. Hermione ran passed him, snatching the wand from his hand before he could fall. She turned it onto another Death Eater, the beginnings of a killing curse on his lips. 

*We got a runner*

Hermione turned toward Kieran’s warning and sent a body-bind hex at her before she could apparate out of reach.

There was one more left, who Draco quickly disarmed. Hermione crossed over to the young man, her wand raised.

“Aren’t you going to interrogate me, Mudblood,” he asked, his eyes narrowed wickedly. “I could have useful information.”

“Do you,” he asked.

“Oh yes,” he said, his grin growing. “There’s something coming for you, Mudblood. And we won’t forget you,” he looked past her toward the others, “or the blood traitors.”

“If that’s all you have then…”

She doesn’t finish before his body starts to shake and he beings foaming at the mouth. Hermione had seen this more and more. 

Death Eaters committing suicide before they allowed themselves to be veritaserumed, or, worse, killed by a Mudblood.

It was all well and good. They were still a few months out from a new batch of Veritaserum, anyway.

Hermione turned to look at her group, her eyes quickly moving across them. They were dirty, bruised, but alive. 

“Let’s go home,” she said. They had won, but she didn’t feel happy. Because they could be here again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.

They could do this until the end of time.

And she wasn’t sure that it would ever make a difference. 

 


	7. Of Toast and Stress Relief

Hermione couldn’t sleep that night. Her head was throbbing, either from being thrown into brick walls, stress, lack of sleep, or maybe it was all three, not to mention the feeling of mounting anxiety in her chest. 

She remembered this sensation, from when she was a child. Anxiety had been her norm. Sleepless nights spent fretting over papers, assignments, her grades, waking up regularly to check and recheck her work the day before it was due. There were days spent curled around a toilet, as waves of nausea passed over her. It became so much a part of her body that there didn’t need to be a reason, there would be moments when her heart would start beating rapidly,  and she would be ceased with an inexplicable certainty that she was dying.

Much of it had, ironically, subsided after Voldemort had returned. It seemed with the greater pressing needs at hand she could focus. It seemed she coped much better in determining the fate of the Wizarding World then she did with determining whether or not an essay needed another sentence.

But lately, that creeping anxiety had returned, bringing with it a sense of upcoming dread, and with nothing to focus it on, it wreaked havoc on her body, and her ability to sleep through the night.

Finally, at around 2 am she gave up on trying. Her wand lit the way to the kitchen. Kieran had been growing more concerned, as had Rowen. Both had expressed it a number of times, urging her to take a break, to eat, to sleep, everything a normal person needed to function well in the world. Things she had to force herself to do. 

She poured herself a glass of water and then went to retrieve some bread from the cabinet when she heard the slightest of creaks behind her. She gripped her wand and whipped around, wand outstretched, ready to strike.

“Bloody hell, Granger, put that thing down before you put an eye out.” The light of her wand fully illuminated Draco, his hand was over his eyes blocking the light. She lowered it and then used her wand to flick on the switch, lighting up the room. Draco lowered his hand and looked up at the light bulb.

“You know that’s still hard to get used to,” he said.    
“I stand by that it makes a whole lot more sense than lighting everything by candle, plus no fire hazard.”

Hermione had purposely incorporated Muggle technology into the Sordidum Headquarters.  Despite her love and respect for the wizarding world, there were some things she maintained that were just simpler in the Muggle world; electricity being one of them.

“What are you doing up,” she asked, turning back to retrieve the bread. 

He held up his hand, wrapped up in a bandage.

“Got hit with a nasty stinging hex,” he said. “The potion will clear it up through the night but it’s painful in the meantime.”

Her eyes flickered to the bandage and back up to his face. There was a bruise forming along his hairline, and his lower lip was cut. She knew she didn’t look much better either. 

“Toast and jam,” she asked, holding up the bread.

“Uh...sure,” he said. 

She nodded and took out two pieces, lightly toasting them with her hand.

“Why can’t you sleep,” he asked, moving to stand beside her at the counter. She continued to look down at the bread and shrugged. 

“Do you not make it a habit of baring your soul to your members?”

Hermione let out a short laugh and spread the jam on the toast. 

“No,” she said, handing it to him. “I don’t.”

“Do you make a habit of serving them jam and toast?”

She glared at him before turning back to the counter.

“No,” she said again. “So don’t get used to it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Granger.”   
She turned, so her back was against the counter and she was looking out at the kitchen. She looked down at the toast, and her stomach clenched at the prospect of food. She brought it up to her mouth and took a small nibble.

Maybe she could trick her anxiety into letting her eat.

Draco turned to face the same direction, the bites in his toast much larger.

“Do you want me to go,” he asked, surprising her. She looked at him for a moment. She did. Of course, she did. Except for the fact that she didn’t. If she was smarter she would say yes, if she was a good leader, she would say yes.

“No,” she said. “You can stay.”   
She took another nibble on the edge of her toast, and swallowed it, harder work than it should have been. 

“Are you sick,” he asked, breaking the silence. She looked up at him, frustratedly. 

“No,” she said, harsher than she meant. “I’m not sick. Why?”

He raised an eyebrow and looked down at her. Hermione maintained her gaze as his eyes moved over her face, her neck, her arms...normally she would feel exposed, the urge to move away or to smack him, but even in her limited experience, she knew what a sleazy look was, and this was...not that.

“That’s not good for you, Granger,” he said. “You know that.”   
“What,” she asked.

“Look at the way your standing.”

She clenched her already tense jaw as she considered her stance. Her shoulders were higher than they should be, her legs and feet positioned as though they could move her into a spring at any moment, and her wand remained clutched in her toastless hand. 

She tried to unfurl her body, to soothe it into a place of ease, but it remained tightly coiled.

“You’re not sleeping,” said Draco. She didn’t argue. “This is probably the first time I’ve seen you eat in a week.”

She glared up at him.

“You’re not with many every second of the day,” she said.    
“I know, are you spending that time eating?”   
She glowered at him but turned back to her toast, taking another petulant bite.

“You were like this in school too.”

“Well-spotted,” she said.

“First few years you always looked like you were on the edge of a nervous breakdown.”

“Sweet of you to notice.”

“I did…”

A biting comment died on her lips at that admission. She didn’t face him, but she looked at him from the corner of her eyes, and then quickly looked away when she saw that he was staring at her. 

“I noticed,” he repeated with a nod. “And you noticed when I was making myself sick 6th year.”

She nodded, slowly, feeling the crumbling bread on her tongue. She felt like she had eaten a meal, but over half of the bread remained.

He was right. She needed to fix this. If not for her sake than for the sake of her people.

“And I noticed when this change happened,” he said, nodding toward her. “You deal with impossible, stressful situations all the time. That’s your life for as long as I’ve known you so, what’s different now?”

She sighed and shook her head.

“It’s just…” She stopped. She didn’t really know what to say. She couldn’t exactly name the difference, it was just a feeling she had, a shift in emotion that she couldn’t place, a flicker of doubt that was eating at her from the inside out.  “What if it’s all pointless?”

The question hung in the air for a moment. Hermione didn’t move, didn’t breathe. It was her first time speaking it to someone else, out loud to more than an empty room. She continued to stare resolutely forward. She didn’t want to see disappointment, or pity, or, even worse, confirmation, in Draco’s eyes.  So she refused to look.

“I thought...I thought after Voldemort died...I thought that so much of the hate would die with him,” she shook her head and laughed bitterly. “We just knew that we could build a better world. I knew it. And then...Death-Eaters, and Blood-Purists, and terrorist groups kept forming, the hate just kept spreading.”   
She was almost talking to herself now, voicing the fears that had been growing steadily over the past few months.

“The members are young and bold, and bright,” she said. “They aren’t old people that we just have to wait to die off and…” she breathed in and finally turned to face him, to look up at him. He was closer than she had thought, staring down at her intently, his expression inscrutable. “I don’t think Harry and Ron’s ideas work either, clearly,” she spat angrily. “But...I don’t want this to be my life forever,” she admitted, finally. “Assuming I don’t die at the hands of a lucky Death Eater,” she added with a shrug. 

She looked at him again, he was still watching her, this time in a way that made her feel the creepy sensation of a blush. She hurriedly looked away. She knew the power of a stare- she could level men twice her size with one, she could strike fear into their hearts with a look. But Draco’s was different. His was the kind of stare that made you feel exposed, vulnerable like you were the only person in the room, which depending on the room and context could be good or terribly frightening. “So,” she said. “What’s the point of it? If your whole life is fighting just to justify your right to exist in the world I…” she bit her lip. “I don’t know how to live that way and plan for a future of something better. So all I do is stay in the present and I think…”

“It’s killing you,” finished Draco with a nod.

She nodded in affirmation. 

Draco waited a moment to speak. She could see in his eyes that he was weighing his words, what he could say, what he should say, and how he should say it.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. Hermione looked at him, almost amused. 

“I bare my soul to you Draco Malfoy,” she said with fake accusation. “And all you can say is “I don’t know.”

He laughed and shrugged.   
“Well,” he said. “I didn’t think it would be so heavy. I thought maybe you just needed a stronger sleeping drought.”

She laughed and took one more bite of her toast before handing it over to him. He took it wordlessly and took a bite.

“Seriously, though,” he said. “I don’t even know how to fix any of this. I don’t know if you’re right, or Potter’s right or if people who go and live out their days in a hut in the forest never seeing another living soul are right. It’s probably more complicated than right or wrong if I had to guess. What I do know,” he turned toward her again, handing the last bit of toast to her, a look of insistence on his face. She took it grudgingly and popped into her mouth. “I’ll wait for you to finish,” said Draco. “Because what I’m about to say is very inspiring and I’d rather not say it to you with a mouthful of bread.”

She smacked him on the arm and swallowed the last bit of toast.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Inspire me.”

“What I do know,” he repeated, stepping closer to her. Hermione fought the instinct to take a step back, holding her ground. She kept her eyes on his face, suddenly very aware of his naked chest. In itself, it was not a distraction and had not been until now. Living in a house with a bunch of warriors, brothers, and sisters in arms, you were family, and seeing the occasional shirtless, or towel-covered individual had never been a distraction for any of them. But now she was forcing herself to keep her gaze upward.

Like some kind of stupid, horny teenager.

Kieran’s words suddenly came crashing back to her, almost making her choke, but she remained calm. 

“I know that you are a fighter,” said Draco. “It’s what you do. You go into spaces that don’t always want you and you fight for your right to exist in those places.” She jumped, slightly when she felt his cold hands on her wrist. “And I can’t imagine how tiring that must be. It’s not something you should have to do, but I don’t think you’re able to do anything else. It’s who you are. It’s infuriating and admirable at the same time.” He paused. “But being a fighter, even being a leader, doesn’t mean you should be fighting and leading in every possible battle you can find.” He stopped and looked down at her hands. She felt her heartbeat accelerate, this time for reasons other than anxiety. “And it means you need to find better ways to cope with your stress. Your life is ridiculously stressful, and traumatizing and all those things, and unless you want to hang up the wand and start a new life somewhere else, then that’s just what it’s going to be. I wish I could tell you if it’s worth it, that it’ll work, that it won’t be replaced by something else altogether in five years, but I can’t. What I can say is that you need to find ways to take care of yourself. And that’s something I don’t know that you have ever done.”

She nodded, weighing his words in her mind. He wasn’t wrong.

“I don’t know that I know how to do that,” she admitted. Her eyes still locked on his hands. It was fascinating to her like it had been when they fought. His skin almost looked silver next to hers. The longer she starred the more out of focus it became, the more brilliantly the two colors swirled together. She blinked and looked up abruptly.

“I find clearing my head, silencing everything that goes on in there to be an almost Herculean endeavor.”

He chuckled a low warm sound. Her eye drifted briefly to his lips, and then hurried back to up to his eyes, she was suddenly possessed by a desire to lick her own lips, to moisten them, but under his scrutinizing gaze she dared not. 

“I can imagine,” he said. 

God, he was so close, and her head was beginning to spin, and that damnable Kieran had planted thoughts in her head that she did not have any time to entertain. 

“You need to find things to distract you, even if it’s only for a little bit.”

Alarm bells rang in her head, panic and the sudden need to escape. She pulled away abruptly and immediately regretted the loss of his skin against hers. She stepped away and looked around, as though she had suddenly forgotten the layout of her own house.

“Granger…”

He was looking at her oddly. 

“Did I say something…”   
“No,” she said hurriedly, she shook her head. “No...no nothing wrong just…uh...I’m feeling kind of light headed.”

“Do you need something to help you sleep or…”   
“No,” she said. “I think I just need to go to bed...to sleep...in...my..bed…”   
Dammit Granger, she scolded. What’s the matter with you?!

She nodded once again for good measure, before pointing toward the door, awkwardly, and then walking toward it.

“Granger…” She froze and turned, far enough now to get the whole sight of him. He, clearly, had no problems relaxing, long, lean body leaned casually against the counter, looking like a bloody slacker. “Let me know if you need help?”

She froze. She was exhausted, she could hardly see straight, and it sounded like his words were coming from the other side of a long wind tunnel. And he was looking like that, looking at her. And he hadn’t actually said anything, except he had said everything. Or had he? Maybe he just meant with a potion, or help with a task. She stared dumbly for a moment, before nodding, every so slightly. 

She needed sleep, that was the only reason she felt like she was a hair’s breadth away from crossing that kitchen and letting him help her relax. 

She turned and hurried out of the kitchen and to her awaiting bedroom. 

####

Draco didn’t see Hermione for another two weeks, and it was more distracting to him than he would like to admit.

When he first, casually brought it up to Kieran, Kieran had shrugged it off.

“She’s a busy woman,” he said. “She has a lot to do. She has spread out across Europe so it takes some time for her to make sure everything is going as smoothly as possible.”

That satisfied him the first few days, but when the week went by, and he still hadn’t seen her, he found his mind was always wandering, always distracted. After a week and a half, he was actually worried. He would listen for clues or stirrings from Kieran and Rowen, but...nothing. 

And, being the rotten little egotist that he was, he couldn’t help but wonder if it had been because of him, because of...well...whatever that had been in the kitchen. He wasn’t sure what it had been. He couldn’t tell if the way she mentioned how hard it was for her to relax was just a simple confession or a hint for an invitation. 

He hated himself for feeling this way. He had struggled in a lot of areas in his life, but confidence with women was never one of them. But Hermione had always been a challenge for him, in every possible way. And here he was acting like some obsessed schoolboy, waiting anxiously for an owl from his crush.

It was pathetic.

After a week he was about ready to pull his own hair out.  

And then he heard the screaming, the yelling, and the arguing. One of the voices was Granger’s for sure, and it was loud enough to alert the whole neighborhood to their presence, if not for the mufflings spells.

He hurried toward the kerfuffle, this time picking out Rowen’s voice as well. 

“You need shut your fucking mouth, Hunter,” warned Rowen. “You know there’s a risk with any mission we all do.”

“RISK,” the voice screamed. “We lost over half of our people. Do you know how fucking close the Captain was to being hit with killing curse? It was not a fight, it was a slaughter.”

Draco hurried toward the living room. When he got there it was like all noise had been stripped from the air. Hermione was barely on her feet, blood-soaked her shirt and one arm was hanging limply at her side, one look and he could see the unnatural bump at the shoulder. He had seen that injury more than a few times playing Quidditch. Rowen was a little less worse for the wear, but she was supporting an almost unconscious man that Draco had met once or twice. There was also an unconscious woman on the ground, near the feet of the red-faced Hunter, who was staring at him with murder in his eyes. 

Hermione moved quickly blocking Hunter’s path before he could take a step. 

“What’s goin…”

“Leave, Draco,” said Hermione, her eyes on Hunter, her wand poised.

“Oh you’re going to protect him Captain,” spat Hunter. “We told you bringing him in was a mistake.”   
“He didn’t do this,” growled Hermione. She looked over her shoulder at Draco, who had yet to move. “I said go, Draco.”   
“Yeah, Draco,” said Hunter, emphasizing his name. “Run on home to daddy and tell him it was a success…”   
“Draco,” said Hermione, turning halfway toward him, her good hand clasping her wand still facing Hunter. “I told you to leave. That’s an order…”   
He didn’t listen, he didn’t hear. His eyes were fixed on Hunter.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” he asked. 

“Oh so it’s just a coincidence then,” said Hunter. He turned his gaze back to Hermione. “They knew we were coming. They knew! They were ready.”

“Hunter you need to go calm down…” said Rowen. 

“What happened? What the hell is going on,” yelled Draco, angrily, stalking toward Hunter. Hermione moved to block his path too, her warning gaze darting between the two of them.  

“Just a coincidence that two days after his father is released from Azkaban on a fucking technicality, he suddenly has inside information on our movements.”

Draco couldn’t hear anything, and he had the sudden urge to vomit. He clenched his teeth and looked at Hunter.

“You’re lying. My father is in Azkaban…”

Hermione sighed heavily, and her face softened, ever so slightly toward him.

“Draco,” she said. “We’ll talk later but right now…”

“I want to talk now,” he yelled, moving toward her. He wasn’t angry at her, he wasn’t going to hurt her, but as he moved toward her aggressive and angry, he realized how it looked. Her wand moved from Hunter toward him, her gaze unflinching. 

“Draco,” she said. “You will leave this room, immediately. That is an order…”

He was so pissed he couldn’t see straight. He wanted to yell at her, to throw something, to remind her whose life this was, whose fucking father this was. But he couldn’t. His eyes moved over the group, surveying their injuries. She was right. She had more emergent things to deal with it. Right now, his internal crisis was last in the triage. He shot a scathing look at Hunter, and turned.

“Fuck this, Captain,” said Hunter. “You used to be someone whose judgment we could trust and now you’re coddling a fucking, Malfoy…”

Draco turned to face Hunter again if he was ignoring the orders…

“Draco,” she snapped. “I said leave.”

He turned again and took one step toward the door.   
“I told you, Captain,” said Hunter. “Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater.”   
Draco turned toward them once more, but before he could Hermione’s wand was out.

“Dormiro,” she whispered. Hunter immediately began to fall toward the ground. She silently levitated him so she could lay him gently on the couch.  She turned toward Rowen.    
“Rowen,” she said. “Go wake Dimitri,” she said. “I want him to check on Reia and Barna…” 

“Yes captain,” said Rowen, with a firm nod. 

“And you’re okay,” said Hermione, looking at Rowen. Rowen nodded.    
“Yes Captain,” she said. “I’m okay.”

Hermione nodded, but Draco could see the war of emotion in her eyes. Whatever had happened, it was close?

Hermione turned on him, the hint of a warning in her eyes. 

Shit, he thought. 

“Come with me...now,” she said. She gestured for him to follower her toward the stairs and then, presumably to her office, but he stopped, stubbornly. She looked over her shoulder at him. “I am not in the mood, Draco.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Well big fucking surprise, neither am I,” he said. “But we can have this conversation in the basement, where I can fix your damn shoulder and whatever else is going on.”

Hermione’s face grew steely, but he felt firm. Silently praying he had not crossed the line he always seemed to be dancing around with him. Finally, she relented, redirecting her path toward the stairs that led to the basement. 

When they got there, he haphazardly shoved a few things to the side of the table and patted it, alerting her to come and sit. Thankfully, she did so without objection. 

“Now, tell me what happened.”

Hermione looked at him and exhaled, a long hard breathe. 

“We had a mission today,” she said. “An important one, Eckles was supposed to be there and so was Damon Rowle…”

Draco used his wand to cut away her shirt. She didn’t balk at the action, she didn’t even pause as he worked the shirt off her torso so he could survey the damage. He reckoned that modesty wasn’t something that could long be maintained in guerilla warfare.

“We also found out that your father was released from Azkaban yesterday.” 

He used a washcloth to wipe away the blood that covered her arms, her back, and her chest, so he could discern what was Hermione blood and Death Eater blood, a long, deep slash ran from her shoulder across her back and almost wrapped around to her ribs. She had used a quick spell to stop the bleeding in the field, but it wouldn’t hold long. 

“How,” he asked, as he crossed to the other side of the table so he could get a better view of her back. His voice was, in his estimation, surprisingly calm.

“Eckles argued that there was new evidence that he was in fact under the Imperius curse, and pulled up some ancient technicality in wizarding law to illustrate that your fathers trial was mishandled.”

He nodded, slightly. He wanted to yell, to scream, to break things, to go out and hunt his father down. But he couldn’t, not now. He took out his wand and carefully traced it along the wound, sealing the skin back up. 

“And the Ministry just sat back and let it happen?”

She let out a bitter laugh.

“There’s nothing they can do now. They’ve made it perfectly clear that as long as it’s legal, anyone can rub their noses in the fact that they are a damn Death Eater,” she said. She shook her head angrily. “Eckles is all but mocking them now. He knows exactly what the law is and walks it perfectly, all while making it perfectly clear where he stands.”

“So,” said Draco. “Why haven’t you killed him yet?”

His question was not angry or accusing, but genuinely curious.

“Because,” said Hermione, a resigned sigh. “I don’t have any proof yet either, not really.”

Draco nodded. He did understand. Hermione, while being more proactive than the ministry, was not out killing any youngster with a Dark Mark, despite her “extremism” she was still discerning about who was killed. 

“So my father was released and…”

“And somehow they found out about our mission, we got to the house and there was a hell of a lot more Death Eaters than were supposed to be there, and they were ready for a fight.” He finished stitching up her back and then moved back to the front of the table. “So Hunter panicked, and he jumped to the conclusion that you must be the mole, and that you had fed information to your father.”

Draco moved closer to her right side and looked at her shoulder. He had dislocated his own at least three times, his mother had always fixed it by hand, one of the few things that they didn’t use magic for. 

“It will be quicker this way,” she had said. “I want to be able to guide it with my own hands.”

Draco gently took her forearm, his thumb absently running over her skin.

“Do you think that’s what happened?”   
She cocked her head to the side, an annoyed look on her face.

“Don’t be stupid, Draco,” she said. “Of course I don’t.”

He laughed despite himself. 

“Okay,” he said, “Lay down.”   
Hermione turned so she could lay on the table, her injured arm facing toward him.  He positioned himself so he was lined up with the middle of her body. He paused for a moment, the briefest of moments, to take her in. Despite the circumstances, despite the storm in his own head, he wondered at how beautiful she looked, somehow, even more than that night at the Yule Ball. 

He gripped her hand at the wrist. She was so calm, and, for a moment, that drowned out his anger. She trusted him. She trusted that he wasn’t a spy. She trusted him enough to follow him into his basement. She was in pain, no doubt, and she was trusting him to help. 

He positioned his other hand under her elbow, and then without counting down, pulled hard and straight on her arm and then moved it back into the socket. She let out a little gasp of pain. His other hand instinctively went up to the side of her face, the one not supporting her arm, moved up to her face, gently, as an almost instinctive response to her pain. 

She closed her eyes and breathed in and out as the pain subsided.

He looked from her shoulder to her face. She opened her eyes, her beautiful, sweet, angry, eyes. 

“Thank you,” she breathed. 

He could feel her breathe on his thumb, perilously close to the corner of her mouth. 

“Better,” he asked. 

She nodded and slowly sat up to sit again on the edge of the table. They stood there for a moment in total silence, neither sure what to say. His father was out of Azkaban, and he didn’t know what to do with that. 

Hermione had just seen her people die in front of her, a part of her job, but something he could never imagine not affecting her terribly.  He didn’t know what to do with that either.

He was about to speak, to say something to feel the uncomfortable silence, but before he could she had reached out with her good arm and pulled him toward her. He wasn’t sure to what end but also knew there was no end he would likely deny her.

But all she did was hug him tightly, almost desperately, with her one good arm. He moved in closer carefully wrapping his arms around her, careful to avoid her shoulder and her freshly healed wound. 

Her forehead was pressed hard into his sternum and he felt a shudder go through her body. He wanted to pull her closer, to hold her tighter to do whatever he could to help her. He didn’t feel like this was enough but then...he did remember her hugging Potter and Weasley a lot. Maybe that’s what this was, a remembrance of a time when hugging her friends was the only thing keeping her rooted to the earth.

It wasn’t, he decided, so bad.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she muttered into his shirt. He sighed and laid his cheek on top of her head, enjoying the feel of her hair against him.    
“I know,” he said. 

“We weren’t…” her voice faltered. “We weren’t going to kill him.”

This prompted him to pull away, so he could look at her.

“Why?”

It was a simple enough question but there was so much caught up in it.

“I mean,” she said. “He wasn’t the mission. We would’ve killed him if he was there but...he wasn’t the mission. I would’ve…” She paused. “I would’ve told you if that was the mission.”

Draco looked down at her. He wanted his father dead. He wanted to be the one to kill him. But right now the only thing he wanted was to close the distance between them and kiss her. 

He was about to do that when she scooted off of the table and her face winced in pain at the slight movement.

“You should get some rest,” he said finally. She nodded. He turned around and went to his cabinet and pulled out a vial. “This is a very powerful sleeping-draught,” he said. “No more than a few drops.”

“Draco I…”

“I’ll go check on the others,” he said. “I’ll come get you if they need you.”

Thankfully, this time, she didn’t argue. She accepted it gratefully. 

“Thank you Draco,” she said. 

He nodded. 

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I know you’ll be flighting off to Merlin knows where without it, so hopefully it knocks out long enough to keep you in one spot.”

Hermione looked down at the vial and then back at him, a small smile curling at the corners of her mouth.

Merlin, that mouth that he wanted to kiss so damn bad.

“I missed you too, Draco,” she said. 

Draco rolled his eyes and motioned her toward the stairs. 

Draco didn’t really want her to go, but she needed to. She was broken, tired, and tomorrow they would have to deal with the aftermath, but she had earned a few hours of sleep.

When she was gone, Draco wearily made his way up the stairs toward their makeshift infirmary. Dimitri, their resident “healer”, since hospitals were not an option for the group, was so busy he didn’t notice.

He made his way over to Rowen, who was sitting up in one of the beds.

“You okay,” he asked, crossing toward her.

“Yeah,” she said, motioning toward her foot. “Just got a broken foot,” she said. “But Dimitri said it’s an easy fix.”

Draco nodded and sat at the edge of her bed. He looked at her face. It was usually so carefree, so devil-may-care, but right now that levity was gone. 

“How bad was it,” he asked.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and bit her lip. When she opened them he could see the tears in her eyes.

“Bad,” she said. 

“How many did we lose?”

“17,” she said with a slow nod, then let out a bitter laugh. “Those assholes.”

Draco didn’t argue. 

“Do you want me to go get Areenia,” he asked. 

The briefest look of surprise past over her features, and then gratefulness. 

“No,” she said. “I want to let her sleep.”

Draco nodded and moved to stand. 

“All right…”

“You...uh...take care of the Captain,” she asked, sticking her tongue out briefly and raising her eyebrows.

“Really, “ he said. “Do you think nows the time for that?”

“Oh I think it’s the perfect time for that,” said Rowen. 

Draco rolled his eyes. 

“Don’t wait too long,” she said. “Merlin knows we can’t live for tomorrow doing this job?”   
She was not wrong. On his way out, he spotted the days issue of the Prophet, there on the front page was his fathers smirking face. He stomped up toward his room, paper in hand he tore at the front page and threw it into his fireplace, igniting it with his wand. He cast another spell, muffling the sound of the room and then let out an angry, frustrated, mournful yell. 

He hated his father.

He hated him for what he did to his family.

If it weren’t for him none of this would have happened.

If it weren’t for him he may have been able to live a normal life, and not become a child soldier at 16.

He hated him for the life Draco would never know. Draco hated that he would never know a version of himself outside of what his father created. 

He hated his father for all that he had lost.

He ripped out another page of the prophet and threw it in the fire.

Then another…

Then another…

He liked watching the words and the pictures, curl and burn, he reached for another and then...froze.

It was a personal ad.

“Help! Lost pet! We are searching for our beloved orange cat, Crookshanks.  Our Trio just isn’t complete without her. If found please bring her to Moony’s old house. She’s a stubborn thing, but we sure do love her.”

He sighed and gripped the paper hard, tearing it slightly in his hands. 

Fucking Potter...


	8. Shrieking Shack and Office Shags

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's consensual sex in this chapter, and other plot stuff.

Over the years, Hermione had honed her ability to silence her nerves before a dangerous mission. Before going into the field of battle, she would enter into a state of calmness, almost serenity, that allowed her to examine, think and move with startling clarity, it was also what made her such an efficient killer.

But now, waiting inside the Shrieking Shack, she was possessed with nerves that took her back to her O.W.L’s at Hogwarts. She hadn’t been able to silence these feelings ever since Draco showed her the newspaper clipping. There was certainly no mistaking the meaning in the clip.  

She knew they had tried to track her down after she left, but, she imagined, it did not take them long to figure out what she was doing, or who she was, and, had since, done her the courtesy of not trying to find her.

Which meant this must be serious.

Which meant she couldn’t ignore it, much to the chagrin of her people.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Draco had protested.

“Yeah,” said Kieran, shaking his head. “I’m with the kid on this one. This does not seem like a good idea.”  
“Well, it’s a good thing that I’m the one going,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Kieran. “One of the most wanted women in the Wizarding world strolling into a shack with two Auror’s, without backup, might I add?”

Hermione rolled her eyes.

“Walking into a shack with my childhood best friends,” said Hermione shrugging on a jacket and pocketing her wand. “Who, I’m guessing, know exactly what I’ve been up to for the past few years and have extended me a professional level of courtesy thus far.” She turned and looked at Draco, looking offended. “Besides you don’t think I could take the both of them if things go south?”

Draco stood in front of her, holding her gaze, his mouth in a tight line.

“As stupid as I find both Potter and Weasley, I’m assuming their few years as Aurors has not rendered them not totally helpless. Plus I’m not entirely certain that it will just be the two of them.”

Hermione has considered that, only briefly. While things had changed, almost in every possible way, Hermione had no illusions over how they felt for her.

Now here she stood, alone, without her army, suddenly- just Hermione, the fallen one-third of the golden trio.

She looked around the neglected shack, somehow even more dilapidated since third year. But the memory remained entirely intact- a relic of a time that existed so simply- shenanigans with Harry, sneaking out in the middle of the night to face the whomping willow, werewolves, and dementors. That year… it was the last year that felt like things would always end up alright.

She had no idea how bad things would actually turn out.

She closed her eyes and breathed in, trying to steady herself, only for that resolve to come crashing down with two distinct pops behind her. She steeled herself to turn around a face them.

_Come on, Granger,_ she told herself. Y  _ou can do this_.

“Hermione…”  
It was Ron’s voice first, tentative, uncertain, quivering with emotion. She turned slowly to face them. She had wondered many times how she would react if she saw them, would she reach for her wand, knowing what their job required them to do; would she scowl at them, regard them with steely indifference; or…

She didn’t have time to decide before Ron did. He ran toward her and caught her up in a hug. She felt herself all but dissolving in the familiar embrace, almost as if nothing had changed. His hand went to the back of her head, pressing down on the puff of curls.

“Oh bloody hell, Hermione,” he breathed, his forehead pressed to hers. “We missed you.”  
Hermione clasped his hand in her own and pressed her lips to his fingers.

“I’ve missed you too.”  
She turned, slowly to meet Harry. And felt the trembling, tumultuous emotions threaten to surface behind her eyes and in the back of her throat. It had been an odd turn, that her fall out had been so strong with Harry. Before that, their relationship would have been considered the stable one, while the one between her and Ron was as volatile as a volcano. But while she had parted ways with both of them, Harry was the one who had hammered the nail in the coffin, and her relationship with Ron, and subsequently everyone else, had been collateral damage.

And now looking at his unruly black hair, his emerald eyes magnified by his familiar glasses, she felt so much. So much anger. So much hate. And so much love.

He moved toward her first. His embrace was more frantic. It didn’t remind her of the Harry of old, but of something desperate, wounded, and gasping for breath.

She hugged him back, burying her face in his shoulder, her hands gripped his sweater tight.

“Thank Merlin you’re alive,” he said. Hermione inhaled and pulled away before her churning emotions got the better of her. She breathed in and stepped away from him, slowly assuming the role of the leader of the Sordidum.  She looked from Harry to Ron.

“All right,” she said. “You got me here…” she didn’t mean to sound cold, but she didn’t know what an inbetween looked like. She couldn’t be the same old Hermione to them, and it seemed almost impossible, pretending to barely know people who knew her better than anyone, so, instead, she moved into calm detachment. “What is it you wanted?”

“Well…” Ron moved closer to her, trying to reestablish some kind of collection. “Can we...can we talk first...how are…” he stuttered over his question. “How have you…” he paused again. “What have you been up…” He stopped again and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.  Despite herself, Hermione laughed.

“I’ve been all right, Ron,” she said with a nod, looking at him with almost a dare in her eyes. “Staying alive.”  
Harry cleared his throat, awkwardly and nodded.

“That’s… that’s good…”

“And you both…” asked Hermione, crossing her arms across her chest, instinctively. “How are things at the Ministry?”

Harry’s eyes narrowed, ever so slightly, picking up on her dare.

“Things are tough lately, to be honest, a lot of tumult.”  
“Uh...huh,” she said with a nod. “I think I’ve read about that in the paper.”

Granger, why are you being such a dick, she thought. In all her imagined reunion scenarios she had never been petty. Maybe, Draco was rubbing off on her.

“Right,” said Harry, his voice a bit sharper. She could feel Ron tense as the mood in the room swiftly changed to chilly.

“Why am I here,” she repeated, finally. “What do you need?”

Ron sighed, knowing the initial emotions of reunited had been lost. He reached into his pocket and pulled the slim book out, handing it to  Hermione. She took it without question and opened it up.

She looked at the cover, and turned it over, briefly, and then looked up at them, and shook her head.

“Okay,” she said.

“Do you know anything about her?”

“Sure, Goody Holmes… killed in the Salem Witch Trials, diary revealed she likely was a witch,” she handed the paper back to him. “The Ministry assigning book reports now, and you called me to help you write the introduction?”

“...Some Death Eaters broke into the Ministry and stole the original diary.”

Hermione couldn’t help herself, she was curious.

“Why,” she said. “The Diary of Goody Holmes can be bought at most bookstores for a few Sickles.”

“We know,” said Ron. “Why would they want the original? Do you know anything about it?”

Hermione closed her eyes and tried to remember anything spectacular about the diary. It was pretty standard, even in the diary there was little talk of witchcraft, most of the entries were about her day to day, her possible flirtation with another Puritan woman, and mounting tensions as the witch hysteria grew.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure you have connections at the ministry that have studied her in depth…”

Harry shook his head.

“No the only thing that exists on her is the diary,” he said. “And frankly there are more commentaries from Muggle writers than there are from wizards.”

Hermione knew that. In general, the history of witches and wizards in the states was less studied, as most of wizarding academia was centralized in Great Britain. She closed her eyes, trying to recall other books that referenced Holmes.

She sighed.

“I think there is a Muggle professor of literature who studied one of her entries…” she snatched the book back and flipped it open in the middle, flipping forward, then backward, then forward one more time. She looked at the page carefully.

“Here,” she said, handing it back and pointing to it. “It’s the only one where she talks about magic, but it’s in the context of a woman rumored by some scholars to be her lover, and, maybe, another witch. The woman is tried and killed as a witch, and in this entry, Holme’s promises that there love will live on. She goes on to use a bunch of traditional resurrection imagery.”

“Okay,” said Ron, looking over the page and then handing it back to Harry. “Sooo…”

“So some scholars speculated that, before she died, she had become obsessed with resurrection spells, even selling her soul to “the devil” to obtain one. But most of that is just considered lore, concocted by a romantic, and isn’t given much intellectual weight by actual historians in the Wizarding world. But...they said that about the Hallows too…”  
“If it’s true...in the hands of the Death Eaters that could be…”

“Catastrophic…” finished Hermione. “They must think that something, a clue, is hidden in the pages of the book.”  
Ron looked at her, curiosity in his eyes. “If she sold her soul if she had discovered the spell then why...why didn’t she use it.”

Hermione smiled and shook her head.

“The devil did what the devil does,” she said, “at least, according to the story.”

“What,” asked Ron.

“He tricked her into a bad deal, there was an ingredient that was necessary for the spell to work, and there was no way for her to get it.”

“What,” asked Harry.

“Well,” she said. “We don’t know.  Some say it’s the blood, bones, or organs of the deceased, which they wouldn’t have given they burned her lover at the stake. Others have speculated that the high cost of such magic is the blood of the progeny of the dead.”

Harry’s eyes widened.

“A child… the missing ingredient is a child?”

“Yeah,” said Hermione. “Resurrection, living forever, if there’s one thing we learned from Voldemort is that it never comes at a small cost.”

She sighed and shrugged.

“But this is all speculation,” she said. “No one knows exactly what the spell was, or if she even had it. Some people think that the whole “made a deal with the devil” thing was just the language of the patriarchal culture designed to ascribe nefarious origins to a woman’s knowledge and creativity.”

Harry sighed heavily.

“But maybe the Death Eaters think there is a spell for resurrection hidden in her diary…”  
“Seems plausible,” she said. “But they’ll run into a snag if the missing ingredient is a child who shares the blood of the dead. It’s not as if Tom Riddle has a host of living relatives, and certainly not a child.”

The thought on its own was an amusing one. She wondered what a child of Voldemort’s was even like, and who in their right mind would produce a child with him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I had more, but there is more speculation than fact about her, and, as you probably remember, I deal a lot better in facts.”

“No,” said Harry. “This...this was helpful...thank you Hermione…”

Harry offered her a smile, which she returned weakly. They stood in silence for a moment, no one knowing what to say, how to dismiss, how to go their separate ways.

Finally, Ron broke the silence.

“Please, Hermione…”

She bit her lip and stepped back, away from his outstretched hand, even though so much of her wanted to reach back to him.

“Ron...I…”

“Come home,” said Ron, a desperate plea in his eyes. “Please come home we miss you. All of us…”

“Ron, don’t…”  
“Ginny misses you...my mum misses you...I...I have a girlfriend now,” he said. Hermione was starting to feel dizzy, a sheen of liquid blurry her eyes. “I...things are getting pretty serious and I know you’d like her.”

“I’m sure I would,” she said, her voice quaking.

“Then come home…”  
Hermione looked at Harry, who was avoiding both of their eyes. He knew he couldn’t add his voice to the plea.

“I can’t…”

“Hermione please,” said Ron, his voice stern. “This...this thing you’re doing, it’s not...it’s not you…”  
In a flash, Hermione’s grief was joined by anger, and she glared at Ron. “What thing is that, Ron?”

Her voice dared him to say it, dared him to speak to the thing that they all knew was true, but would implicate all of them if they spoke. She as the guilty party, and they as the people who kept it to themselves, the ones who knew who the leader of the Sordidum was.

“Hermione,” whispered Harry finally. “We can’t ignore this forever…”

Harry knew as soon as he said it was the wrong thing, and, from Ron’s jaw clench, so did he.

“Really,” she spat. “That seems to be what the ministry is good at, isn’t it? Ignoring problems until someone gets killed.”

Harry looked away as though she had struck him, and Hermione was seething, her venomous glare locked on him, unflinching and without apology.

She sneered and turned away from them.

“I’ll let you know if I find anything out,” she said, her voice harsh. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

She had to get out now. She had to leave, she felt herself cracking beneath the weight of her emotions.

She was about to apparate when she felt a hand clasp around her wrist.

She didn’t turn, she didn’t have to.

“We love you, Hermione,” said Ron, his voice low. “Please, be careful out there.”

She tried to breathe, but it caught in her tight throat. “You too, Ron.”  
With that, she apparated out of the shack, leaving her friends behind, back to Headquarters. As soon as she landed in her room, she collapsed onto the ground, gasping for breath, clutching her heart, as strangled, dry sobs escaped her throat.

 

#####

Draco heard her before he saw her, the breaking of crashing cups and swearing. He stopped to make sure it was Hermione’s office, before knocking on the door.

He heard another expletive, the sound of stumbled walking and then the door opened. Hermione was leaning heavily into the frame, her head lulling onto the wall.

“DRACO,” she exclaimed, her eyes widening and holding out her arms. “It’s you!”  
Draco looked at her suspiciously.

“Yes,” he said. “It is…”

“Come in...come in...come in…” she said, hurriedly, motioning with her hands. He looked into the hallway, down both ways, before stepping into the office. Hermione closed the door. The room was dimly lit, as the sun outside the window was almost done setting, and laying on the ground, next to an open book, was a completely empty bottle of firewhiskey.  
“Jesus Granger…”

“Help!”

Draco jumped and looked over his shoulder.

“What?!”

“Uuugghhhh,” Hermione let out a long dramatic sigh, and she pointed toward the cabinet. “The top...the top...the TOP!” Draco looked at her, confusion giving way to amusement. “There’ smore...alco..alolol...alcohol…”  
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

She stuck out her tongue and blew it at him, and gave a thumbs down. “What are you, my mum?” She let out a small sad giggle. “Come on Draco,” she said. “Pleeease. I can’t reach.”  
Draco blinked and looked at her desk, where her wand was sitting.

“You know you’re a witch right?”

Her eyes widened, and then she burst out into uncontrollable laughter. She cackled and doubled over, trying to catch her breathe and speak.

“You’re right,” she gasped. “I totally forgot.” She took a stumbling step toward the desk, to retrieve her wand.

Draco reached out and grabbed her shoulders, straightening her. “On second thought,” he said. “You just stay put, you probably shouldn’t operate a wand in this state. Why don’t you just take a seat…” He moved to help her to her chair, but instead, she flopped onto the ground, sitting crossed legged and expectantly, like a child waiting for a toy. Draco looked at her for a moment. She looked straight up adorable, somehow as far as he could imagine from the fierce warrior he had come to know over the past 6 months. But he was certain he could see red eyes, and the streaks left by tears against her cheek. This wasn’t just drinking to drink, it was drinking to drown her sorrows. While, not the healthiest way, he had been telling her to try and cope, so who was he to judge. He reached up to the top of the shelf and grabbed a full bottle of fire whiskey. He looked down at Hermione and shook the bottle at her.

“This what you want?”

“Yesss,” she said, with a nod and then patting the floor next to her. “Drink with me,” she said. “That’s an...order…” She leaned her torso forward, reaching herself for the bottle, but she lost her balance, falling forward off her ass. She let out a yelp, but she reached out and stopped herself before she fell face first into the floor. She pushed herself back up into a sitting position and grinned up at him.

He shook his head, but he sat on the ground beside him. He opened the bottle and handed it to her, to his surprise she didn’t pour it into a glass but took a long drink straight from the bottle. Her face twisted and she stuck her tongue out and made a “blah” noise before taking another drink.

She held the bottle out to him. Draco looked from the bottle to her eyes, and then took it.

“I never thought I’d see you drunk, Granger.”

She shrugged.

“It’s like spotting a unicorn,” she said, tucking her knees up under her chin. “Only comes around once in a while, but when you do, it’s magical.”

“That’s so?”

“Yup… I’m much more interesting when I’m drunk,”’she said taking the bottle.

He raised an eyebrow, as she took another sip.  Even though he was far more used to drinking than her, he was already feeling a warmth spread in his feet as the fire whiskey spread.

“I can’t imagine that’s true…”

She scoffed and handed him the bottle, bumping slightly into his shoulder, head pulling forward momentarily into his shoulder but then bobbing back up.

“Psssh,” she scoffed. “Sober Granger is boring and serious.”

Draco looked at her for a moment, surprised to find that drunk Hermione was a fisher. Oh well, he had no problem indulging her.

Not right now, with her cheeks flushed red, inhibitions and armors abandoned.

“I don’t know if a sexy, brilliant leader of a guerilla army could rightfully be called boring…”

He watched her, as she weaved back and forth, her eyes flickered slightly and she looked at him, for a moment, but it wasn’t a look of surprise, but something else entirely. Something he couldn’t name.

He smirked at her and jostled her with his shoulder.

“Not that drunk Granger is bad…”

They sat in silence for a moment, Granger starring forward, thoughtfully. He looked down at her.

“I can hear you thinking.”

When she looked back at him, Draco was taken aback by the emotion in her eyes. It seemed, drunk or sober, Granger was always complicated.

“I take it talks with Potter and Weasley were… difficult.”

She swallowed hard and looked away.

“I haven’t seen them in over three years,” she said, her voice surprisingly calm, despite her inebriated state. “I haven’t seen them since…” she paused and looked at him. Draco didn’t move or blink, he was barely breathing, he didn’t want to interrupt hers. “Do you know how my parents died?”

Draco froze. He… he didn’t know they had died. Granted, post-war had been a hellishly distracted time for him.

“No,” he said.

Hermione continued to stare forward, in a daze.

“I restored their memories and I brought them back to the UK,” she said. “I had hidden them there to keep them safe, I knew being connected to me was a liability. I honestly… I sent them there, a small part of me certain I’d never see them again. When we won… it was… it felt unreal… like we were too lucky. Harry, Ron… they all lost so many people and I… my family was entirely intact.” She shook her head. He watched her curls swish as she shook her head, without fail, it distracted him, the way they moved and how they sounded. “It became clear really fast that no one was prepared for what it meant to rebuild, what to do with Death Eaters and sympathizers, especially the ones we didn’t have enough proof, the ones who claimed the imperius curse and threat of death for why they did what they did.”

She stopped and laughed a small, sad laugh.

“Merlin, Harry wanted so badly to start a new world. He believes so much in mercy. It’s why he didn’t let Sirius kill Peter Pettigrew, why he…”

“He didn’t leave me behind in the Room of Requirements.”

She nodded. He could see the war of love and anger in her eyes l, of admiration and intense frustration.

“But he doesn’t know how to translate that into the work he does.” She breathed in, heavily. “Anyway. It was clear that no one knew the best way to move forward. There was this strong desire for rehabilitation, to make it clear that there was a way back, even if you were on the wrong side. But all it did was allow space for voices that should never have been given airtime.”  He remembered that. The ministry attempted several dialogues with Voldemort sympathizers, it was posited as the best way to change people’s minds. Draco had never thought until now what that must have been like for Hermione, and people like her, to read interviews in the Prophet with blood purists, to know that the Ministry was dialoguing with them in rooms where laws were being made.

“There was this Death Eater,” she continued. “Marissa Morgul...when she was caught she threw herself onto the mercy of the ministry, agreed to rehabilitation.  One step of rehabilitation was allowing them to re-enter society, under the watch of the Ministry. I volunteered to do the interview with Marissa. She said all the right things but… I could tell, from the way she looked at me, responded to me… she was not rehabilitated.” She paused and took a shaky breath.

Draco moved closer to her, he tentatively raised an arm, not sure if he should wrap it around her. But her voice was growing strained and rough- less calm and collected. Slowly he lowered it over her shoulder. “The other Aurors, none of them muggle-born, reported that she was properly contrite and ready for the next step of the rehabilitation.” Draco squeezed tighter, a mix of shame and anger inside of him. It was hard for him not to look down on them, to swear in anger at them for not listening to her, but given where he had been two years ago, he didn’t have room to judge. Yet he did. Potter should have known better. “I told them that I could tell, that it was the kind of thing that I could sense.”

She shook her head and continued. “All of those jackasses who prided themselves so much in being pro-Muggle didn’t listen to me when I was telling them that this woman was dangerous.” Her chin was trembling now, her voice came out wobbly, undulating up and down. She dropped her head, and Draco could feel her whole body tense under his arm as if steeling herself before she could speak again. She sat in silence for a few minutes, trying to find her voice again. For a moment, he wasn’t sure that she would continue.

“Harry told me everything would be fine, that this was necessary, that Snape was proof that, sometimes, even Death Eaters could come back, and we needed to give them the chance.” She laughed bitterly. “He speaks so passionately about it, and he’s Harry, so you believe him. He has a power he doesn’t even know he has. So she was set free…” she blinked, releasing the first stream of tears he had actually seen from her. He had seen her on the verge a few times, but he had yet to see her cry. Despite the situation, despite the ache, he felt honored, he was deeply aware that it means something for her to be crying in front of him.

“She was set free, and the Ministry didn’t listen to my insistence that they double down on Muggle-born protection for those connected to the Wizarding world. They tried but...resources were limited, and they said that the war was over, Voldemort was dead, and Muggles were safe.” She blinked again, more tears spilled from her eyes, down her cheek and into the corner of her mouth. “She killed them. She found my parents and she killed them, she escaped the careful watch of the Ministry and went into hiding, they looked for a week before giving up for more important things.”  

Her fingers dug hard into her knees, the words coming out now in a pained whisper. “So I found her...took me a week, and I killed her,” for a moment her face was covered in an icy clarity. “And fuck, it felt so good.” She shook her head, almost in disbelief at the words she was speaking. “It felt so good, and I knew...I knew I couldn’t stay anymore and continue to prop up the illusion of fake healing, the kind that fooled itself into believing that it was on my side when it wasn’t. So I left and...I cut all ties to Harry, to Ron, to everyone and…” she let out a shuddering gasp and buried her head in her hand. His hand moved up and down her back, steadying her, reminding her that he was here, that she wasn’t alone, “I thought it was going to kill me.” She pressed a hand to her heart as if she was pressing down on the pain blooming there. “They were my life, I was ready to die for them a few years ago, and now I was leaving them behind completely. And I thought it would kill me, and then…then I found Kieran and Rowen. And they were willing to die to protect Muggle’s, not just the ones they knew and loved. It helped, but I never let myself for them like I did for Harry and Ron. And every day, it hurt just a little less than the day before, and then I made a new family, I discovered so much about myself that never dreamed, and I sacrificed so much of myself that I thought made me who I was.” She stopped and turned to look at him fully, for the first time since beginning her story. “And then I saw them…”

She saw them, he thought and remembered who she had been, who they had been all her best hopes for the future and who she would become, and all that she had lost along the way.  Going into that shack, meant returning to every place of hurt that dwelled inside her.

He looked down at her, tears trembling in the corner of her mouth, honey brown eyes bright and shining behind the tears. Slowly, he reached up a hand, to cup her face. She was warm and soft beneath his skin. For a moment she froze, but then leaned into his touch, closing her eyes.

“Granger,” he whispered. “What can I do to…”

It was sudden, heated, and urgent she closed the space between their lips, one hand reaching around the back of his neck pulling him into her hard. It was a mix of tastes, the salt from her tears, the bite of the whiskey, and her own natural taste that was, in itself, so uniquely her. He moaned into her mouth as she went up onto her knees and moved closer to him, her other hand clasped his arm tight, her nails digging into his shirt. He was moments away from giving in, from losing himself in the kiss when he pulled away, breathing heavy. His eyes lingered for a bit on her lips, swollen and inviting, before immediately going up to her eyes. She was looking at him, confused, if not a little irritated.

“Draco wha…”  
“Look Granger,” he said, his hands moving up and down her arms. “I...look, you’re drunk, and I don’t think you’d be doing this if you…”  
She looked up at him, her gaze softening from irritation into something akin to affection. “Look Draco,” she said. “I’m pretty well sobered up here, just a little tipsy. But if you think I haven’t wanted to jump you for the past month and a half then you’re not as clever as I thought.”

Fuck, Draco felt a surge of desire spread in his chest and abdomen. This didn’t bode well for his self-control, if that confession, coming from that mouth, from the most powerful woman he had ever met…

(He paused and took a brief moment to wonder about when that became a thing that turned him on)

… was enough to make him hard on its own, then

Merlin knows what another kiss may do to him.

His hand still pressed to her cheek, dragged a thumb along her bottom lip, she closed her eyes and let out a soft breathy moan.

He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath.

“Hermione…” her name felt odd on his tongue, easier than he would have thought. Even in their civility, he called her Granger. He wasn’t sure that he could ever call her anything else regularly, but he could imagine, breathing her name into her skin, her legs wrapped around him… “You’re not in the best place right now,” he said, her eyes were still trembling with unshed tears, her body still quacking either from emotion or desire, or both. “I don’t want you to wake up and regret…”

“Please,” she said, she pressed her forehead to his, eyes squeezed shut. “Please Draco…”

Shit… shit… shit… he instinctively moved closer, he wanted to feel her against him.

She looked up at him, like some damn vixen, from under long hooded lashes.

“Please… I just want to feel good right now.”

That was it.  She was in her right mind, in his arms, asking him to help her.  He didn’t need anything else. His arms snaked around her waist and pulled her so she was pressed flush against him, and his mouth descended onto hers.

###

Somewhere, in some naughty schoolboy fantasy, Hermione found herself sitting on the edge of her desk, Draco firmly between her legs, as his mouth kissed and sucked along her collarbone. Her arms were hooked under his,  digging into his back.

She didn’t know if this was a good idea. But she didn’t think it was a bad idea either?

Was it wrong?

Was it…

“Granger…” his muffled voice rose from the tender spot where her neck met her shoulder. “I can

Hear you thinking.”

Hermione ‘s hand went into his hair and directed his face upward.

Merlin, he was beautiful.

“Draco,” she said. “Is this… I want to be clear… I just…” it was hard to concentrate with his hands holding her ass so tight. “I don’t want to just use you but…” it was all she could do, she didn’t have the bandwidth right now she wanted to not have to think, she just wanted to feel good.

“Granger,” he said, his breathe on her skin was driving her insane. “You have my full and enthusiastic consent to use me for anything you want.”

Hermione held his silver gaze for a few more moments and then tugged at his hair, so his mouth was the same place it had been.

She tightened her legs and scooted to the edge so she could feel him harder against him. His hands were rough, as they found there way under the hem of her shirt, grazing along the sensitive skin of her back, over the scars fresh and old. He was going slow, slower than she would have imagined- it’s excruciating.

It had been...well… longer than she cared to admit since she had been touched like this, since she had felt this pooling, gathering heat.

His mouth moved toward her sternum, over her pounding heart. She groaned when his lips left her yet again but were sated when she felt his hands tug at the hem of her shirt and pull it up over her head.

She felt the briefest flicker of insecurity when she remembered that every last inch of her clothing was for function, not fashion, including her bra. But that was chased away the minute her shirt was off and he looked down at her. His eyes traveled from her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, his pupils blown with desire.

Every inch of her skin was on fire with expectation as his mouth moved to the sloping tops of her breast, she looked down at him once again, every rational thought was long gone from her mind.

The only thing left was need.

The need to feel his mouth on every inch of her body.

The need to feel his skin against hers.

She regained control long enough to reach to him and tug wantingly at his shirt. He looked up from his work, and smirked at her, pulling away long enough to remove his own shirt.

Hermione let out a soft moan at what she was saw. She had seen him shirtless a few times, but the context always made it so lust was the last thing from her mind, but now, combined with mussed hair, his lips swollen from kissing, and his eyes taking her in like she was something he wanted to bury himself in...her whole body reacted to him.

She pulled him back toward her, her arms exploring every terrain of his exposed skin, noting the spots that made him moan into her mouth. She had never been quite so...aggressive, in fact, it seemed like something that would never come naturally to her. There were girls that screamed vixen, and she was simply not one of them. But she found her instincts, once again, were serving her well, as she gently bit his lip, making him buck against her.

She could feel through his slacks how hard she was, and it made her feel a surge of confidence...that she was the one who could make him feel like that. When he pulled away from her lips, and back to her chest, he was moving faster, with more hunger as he unhooked bra and tossed it to the side.

He pulled away for a moment, taking her in… in that way that could make her feel completely exposed, though this time, she was.  When he looked back up at her, the look in his eyes was almost enough to make her come on its own.

“Bloody hell, Granger,” he muttered, with a shake of his head. She let out a louder-then-she-intended moan when his lips found her nipples. His tongue teased one, while his hand covered the other. Her head fell back, and she arched into his touch.

“Oh Christ...Draco…”

His eyes flicked up briefly, and he smirked, his nipple between his teeth. He was taking his sweet excruciating time, enjoying every second of it, and doing exactly what she had asked him.

There wasn’t room for anything else in her mind, as Draco’s hands worked her pants down her legs, as his hands grazed up and down her legs, feeling every inch of her, working every inch of her into a tremulous mess of anticipation, as he went down on his knees in front of her, and looked up at her, sitting on the desk in front of him almost completely naked. All she could think about then was how badly she wanted Draco Malfoy to fuck her on this desk. She couldn’t imagine anything she could possibly want more than that…

“Granger,” he said, his voice low and dark and weighted with desire. “Can I taste you?”

Fuck…

She was wrong.

“Yes…” she managed, surprised that she even got her mind working long enough to say that. His fingers hooked around her panties, sliding them down. She was well passed any capacity for shame or embarrassment or insecurity, even as she sat naked on her desk, with Draco’s breath against her. She was wet and slick already, and she all but came undone when he ran his tongue experimentally along her folds. She let out a small yelp, and buried her hand in his hair, to steady herself. Draco, it seemed, took this as an urging forward, which she didn’t fight. He pressed his tongue into her clit, making her grip tighter on his hair as she panted his name into the void.

Her legs tightened their hold slightly around his head and her body arched into him. He moaned into her, drawing her briefly out of her reverie. She loosened her grip on his hair and relaxed her legs.

“I’m sorry,” she said hurriedly. “Did that…”

He looked up briefly and pulled away just a few centimeters.

“Are… are you okay,” she asked, the question coming out awkwardly. He licked his lips and raised an eyebrow. His hands went up to either side of thighs, grasping them firmly.

“Jee Granger,” he said, cocking his head theatrically to the side. “I don’t know, Granger.”  
She made a face and gently grasped the back of his head, shutting him up effectively.

Hermione was lucky that she had permanent silencing charms on the room because when she came in Draco’s mouth it was not silent. His hands held her firmly in place as her body shuddered around him.

When she was finished, he stood back up, so he was looking her in the eyes. She pulled him back against her naked body, tasting herself on his mouth. His mouth had been amazing, but she was ready, she wanted to feel him inside of her, she wanted to see his face, awash with pleasure.

Her hands found his belt and began working it out of the loops of his slack.  Her fingers were not quite as dexterous as his, but to be fair, her body had yet to fully recover from what he had just done to it. While she worked on his pants, she took her turn to sample the taste of Draco’s skin, along his jaw, and up to his ear, where she couldn’t help but lightly breathe his name.

When his pants were off, he quickly stepped out of them and kicked them aside. Hermione took her time, letting her eyes roam over his body, hungrily taking in every inch of him. There were many places she had grown more confident in over the years, she had grown into herself as a woman, as a leader, as a person- but in terms of sex, of being vocal about what she wanted, what she felt, she always felt like an imposter.

She wanted to whisper sweet, dirty nothings in his ear, to be as vocal in this space as she was in every other part of her life, to let him know how much she was enjoying him, enjoying this. Something other than an awkward thumbs up that she had to actively fight down.

She hoped the look was enough, enough to show her want and her desire.

“You’re still good,” asked Draco. He was, obviously, ready and prepared to continue. “You still want…” Even his request, his asking for confirmation, was sexy.  
She nodded urgently, reaching back out toward him.

“Yes,” she said. “I want this. I want you. Right now.”

He positioned himself between her legs, and then Hermione shoved him away, with more force than she meant.

“What...what…” asked Draco looking at her confused.

“Oh sorry,” she said. “Uh...birth control...I haven’t had the...uh...occasion to stay on it.”

“Oh...oh,” he said, moving back closer to her, his hands resting on the desk on either side of her. “Right...there’s a pretty simple potion for after…”  
Hermione raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms over herself. She saw Draco’s face fall in disappointment, but she continued.

“You always just keep that on standby…”

“Why,” he said, raising an eyebrow and smirking at her. “You jealous, Granger?”  
“No,” she denied, firmly. “I just like to know if I should be worried about my soldiers fraternizing.”

He snorted.

“You know most of your people are shagging each other,” he said. “Since, you know, they don’t have time to date. The birth control potion is in high demand around here.”

“Well,” she said. “Does it protect against STD’s?”  
Draco looked at her for a moment. “Well...I’m clean...if you…”  
“Me too,” she said hurriedly, nodding her head. She was a bit worried that the mood was lost. But it was recovered quickly as Draco stepped back into the space between her legs.

“Now,” he said, leaning in close, his lips grazing over hers. “Anything else?”

“No,” she whispered. “That’s...that’s all..”

It had been a while, so Hermione prepared herself for the sensation, as he entered her.

It was more gentle than she would have thought.

She never, in a million years, would have expected him to be gentle, she wondered if that was normal or him reigning himself in for her sake. One of his hands was pressed on the desk, the other behind her, splayed across her lower back, helping to hold her up.

She was surprised how quickly the familiar tightness abated, replaced with a glorious heat, once again curling inside of her as he began to thrust into her. Usually, she felt like her sexual partners had kept their eyes closed, while they were inside her, even Ron. Draco’s eyes remained opened though, fixed on her face, like he didn’t want to miss a moment like that was just as important for getting him off as anything else.

She took her note from him, looking at him two. For a moment, it was awkward, as she moaned, and breathed, and sweat, as her mouth opened, and she was sure she was melting and coming undone under him. She wondered that that would ever be attractive? But as she watched it happen on his face, as she watched his control slip away, as he let himself be taken completely, it was enough to bring her over the edge again.

They held each other for a moment, her hands still digging hard into his forearms and her forehead on his shoulder as she collected herself. When she pulled away, long strands of her hair stuck to his face by the sweat that had formed there.

He sputtered and blew it off of him.

“Merlin, Granger,” he said. “You have so much hair.”  
She glared at him, and reached up and pulled his hair away from him.  
“That’s great, Draco,” she said. “Women love it when the first thing you do is insult them after a shag.”

He snorted and reached up toward her, taking a lock of hair between his thumb and pointer, feeling it between his fingers. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, it was a weakness when someone played with her hair, one that she hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Even when we were in school, Granger, when I hated your guts…I always loved your hair.”

He took a handful and tugged lightly, and, Merlin be damned if she wasn’t about ready to go again.

But, she had to admit, Kieran’s advice had not been wrong, it was nice, for a moment, not to worry about anything else aside from feeling good, and making him feel good. That was simple.

That was not complicated in the least.

Even if it was Draco Malfoy.


	9. Rules, Rules and More Rules

When Lucius Malfoy first got out of Azkaban, he wasn’t certain what all would be different. After Voldemort was defeated, he had not made it very far before he too was tracked down by what was left of the crippled Ministry.

He had attempted to claim many things to avoid prison, the Imperius Curse, threats against himself and his family. What was perhaps the most difficult thing to witness was how weakly his own son and wife corroborated his stories.

And, for Narcissa, when it came down to it, her priority had been keeping Draco out of prison, which she narrowly succeeded in.

Lucius had not been so lucky. And, while Azkaban was much more bearable since the retirement of the Dementors, it was still no picnic. So when he found out he was going to have the chance to breathe fresh air again, he didn’t give much thought to what his situation would be when he got out.

He was just happy to get out. He was grateful to Eckles for his help, so he couldn’t very well turn him down when he offered to arrange housing for him in exchange for a little bit of work; a work that he did not know the nature of, he said yes.

And this is how he found himself in the basement, meticulously measuring out ingredients, intensifying and abating the heat of a flame, and stirring exactly 12 and ½ times per 12 minutes.

Lucius, like so many in his family, had a proclivity for potions, one that he had passed on to his son. But he had not been put to work in a long time. And found it galling that no one would tell him why.

“You denounced our ways Lucius,” Rowle had explained. “In a court, for newspapers, everywhere, you denied any affiliation with the Dark Lord.”

“To survive,” he had all but yelled back. “Just as any of you would have done.”

“As it is,” Rowle had continued, calmly, with a smoothness and elegance that far outstripped his brother, the Rowle brother that Lucius was most acquainted with. “You must prove yourself worthy.”

He did not fight him. He knew he was on thin ice as it was. He even considered briefly turning his back on the whole thing, running away and starting a new life somewhere else. He remembered how done he had been by the end of the war, how desperate he was for it all to just end, one way or the other.

He was not looking at the past with the same rose-colored glasses. But when he considered this, when he considered a life surrounded by anything other than pure blood, when he imagined, watching from a distance as the Ministry and other circles were infiltrated with Mud-bloods and Muggle-sympathizers, it made him sick. He could not abide it.

And this time things were different. He knew that. He didn’t know if it was better, or worse, but it was certainly different. The way the new leaders maneuvered through the world with skill and dexterity, the way they were met with respect in the communities. It was genius.

There was more intentionality, more precision, rather than volleying attacks at a school.

He wanted to stick around and see what happened.

It wasn’t as if he had anything else waiting for him. Narcissa was dead. The news had come long ago to him, in Azkaban prison. The circumstances had only been speculated upon, and no one had yet to share them with him. And his son, Draco, that weakling, had run away.

Narcissa always did spoil the boy, made him weak and soft. And then he ran, not daring to carry the torch into this next generation of Death Eaters.

It disgusted him.

And then, of course, there was the matter of the child. The child that Rowle kept secret in a room upstairs. The child who is concealed behind muffling spells and charms. He had caught glimpses of her though, in secret.

And it became immediately clear why Rowle was keeping her hidden.

There was no mistaking her sharp and dominating features; the wild Lestrange hair, and the pointed severe features of a Riddle. There had always been rumors about the Dark Lord and Lestrange.  If it could be said that he had affection for anyone, the Dark Lord had it for Nagini and that mad-woman. It had always been enraging to watch. She was no more devoted than he, no more skilled as a Death Eater, she simply had the advantage of being insane, and apparently, his mate.

It made him sick even thinking about it now, as he watched the time to assure that he did not miss the 12-minute mark.

But even with all of those clues, Lucius had been unable to piece together exactly what the plan was. He was working on this potion, this incredibly complex and demanding potion that he had never heard of.

He was not a humble man and waiting to receive commands from a child like Rowle, that was...that was almost too much to bear.

But he would bear it for now.

He would stir potions, and mix stinking ingredients until it looked and smelled and boiled in the way it should.

He would do his work, and then...he would see what his next move would be.

######

“What time is it?!”

Draco moaned and reached out toward Hermione pulling her back down into the blanket.

“Shh...shhh…” he said, eyes still closed. “Go to bed…”

He had, over the last few months, grown more accustomed to this behavior. She rarely fell asleep in his bed, at most she would lay there for a few moments, gathering back her energy and then she would leave and return to her bed.

Once near the beginning, in all her glorious awkwardness, she had stood there, holding her balled up clothes too her, and then held out her hand, as though some tawdry business transaction had just taken place. He had laughed, loud and hard at that, but shook her hand all the same.

She had, thankfully, grown more comfortable with their set up. She wouldn’t rush to cover herself, sometimes she would even spare a few moments to lay there with her head on his shoulder, and occasionally. She would even fall asleep but it was only ever for a few minutes, and every time she would wake up in a panic, demanding the time.

While they had taken some strides in helping her relax, it had clearly not infiltrated the rest of her life.

But this time, barely thinking through his own sleep haze, he pulled her back down onto the bed.

“Granger,” he groaned. “It’s 2:30 am,” he said. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

She shoved his arm off her torso and sat up again. He groaned and rolled over, blinking into the dark. There was enough moonlight so that he could see her, sitting on the edge of his bed, looking over the room, trying to find her clothes.

They could be anywhere, honestly.

She had been particularly eager last night.

“Granger,” he said, reaching out and touching her back. She stiffened slightly but didn’t move. In particular Granger fashion, she had laid out several rules for their particular relationship. The main, and essentially, only rule was: this is purely physical and we are not in a relationship. This umbrella rule had many supporting rules that included; not spending the night in his bed, not holding his hand, avoiding gentle caresses that were not done in the heat of the moment, not talking about it with others, no public flirting (one that Draco fought her on, because, he had been publically flirting with her since he had got there), and no looking at her like he had seen her naked, that one he couldn’t always control. Honestly,  finding out that particular kink was a new one for him. But he had never been so turned as he was from going from battle to the bedroom, from watching her lead a meeting discussing attack strategies to watching her breathily gasp his name. It was kind of ridiculous, honestly.

But now, he was cold, and it was 2:30 am, she didn’t need to be up for another 3 hours.

“Just stay a little longer, Granger,” he said. “It’s cold and I need your body heat or I’ll freeze to death.”

She laughed, and sat there for a few more moments, before surprising him by dropping back into the bed. He stared at her for a moment, surprised.

“What?”

“I just...I was…”

“I can leave if you want…”

“No,” he said shaking his head, and dropping his head down to kiss her smooth shoulder. “No,” he said again. “You should stay.”

“Only because I’m exhausted, and my legs feel like noodles.”

“That’s what happens when you shag against a wall…”

She exhaled. She was still stiff, and uncomfortable, and it made him feel a twinge of unfamiliar guilt.

“Granger,” he said. “If you don’t think you can sleep in here then…”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No...I’m good. I want…”

She stopped speaking, leaving the sentence unfinished. He was glad she did. He knew what would happen if she had finished the sentence. If she had said that she wanted to stay, out loud. She would have left.

Immediately.

“We have a meet-up with a contact,” she said, quickly diverting the conversation.

“We?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I just feel like we haven’t had a mission together in a while…” He didn’t know if that was on purpose or done unconsciously since they began sleeping together.

“Well, you’re coming with me on this one.”

“All right,” he said. “When?”

“Tomorrow night. He’s working more on the inside of things, but he does support us financially which is...it’s important.”

He nodded.

He closed his eyes and laid back against his pillow, listening to her breathe, waiting for it to become more relaxed and regular, waiting for her body to release its tension and sink into the mattress before he moved a little closer to her.

In her sleep, she rolled toward him and onto her side, so she was facing him. He tentatively raised a hand toward one of the rings in her hair and felt it between his fingers, hair that he loved to bury his face into, that stuck to her forehead, to his shoulder.  

He wondered at the situation he found himself in, a naked Hermione Granger in his bed, as his leader, and, even, as his friend.

He never in a million years would have seen this eventuality in his future, and never would have dreamed how much he liked it.  
###

Hermione woke again around 4:20, this time she stood up without waking Draco. She looked around for her clothes. She found her jeans and that was it. It was too dark, or she was too tired. So she grabbed one of the discarded blankets and wrapped it around herself.

She would come back for clothes later.

She looked back at Draco briefly, taking in his sleeping form. There were times she forgot just how damn pretty the man was, and with his hair mussed, his mouth open slightly, and his expression devoid of any smirk or worry or anger...it was, at times, startling.

She had heard other people thought this at Hogwarts. The girls, even Gryffindor girls, would grudgingly admit that Draco was attractive. Hermione had, even in her heart of secret hearts, never been one of them.

He had treated her like an insect, wished death on her person, tried to murder Buckbeak, and beyond all that had been, by all definitions, a slithering, sniveling coward. It would have been impossible for her to look past any of that and see anything other than how ugly he was on the inside.

But now… she wondered how she ever could have not seen it.

She pulled her eyes away, hurriedly, when he stirred slightly. She crept quietly across the room and out the door. She could hear some movement in and around the house. There was always someone who was awake, no matter the time. It was a house filled with the traumatized, the angry, and the vengeful. Sleep was not something that came easily to many of them.

She was almost there, almost to her room when she turned the corner and saw the bright light emitting from someone’s wand.

“Captain?!”

“Shit,” she said. “Put that wand down Kieran, before you blind me.”

“Sorry!”

He lowered it, slightly, so the glow was enough to illuminate their faces.

“What are you…” Kieran stopped and looked down, noting her attire, or lack thereof. He tightened his lips, trying to keep back the smirk forming there.  She exhaled, and cocked her hip to the side, dramatically tapping her foot.

“Fine…” she said. “Go ahead, get whatever out that you need to.”

“Oh I’ve nothing to say,” said Kieran. “I’m just so proud…”

“You’re so weird.”

“What,” he said. “How’s it weird to be proud of my Captain and her late-night, dirty sex games with her former enemies. It’s the stuff great novels are made of.”

“Uh huh…”

“Come on though,” said Kieran. “Don’t worry, most of us have suspected for a couple of weeks now.”

“What?!”

The question came out louder than she meant.

“Keep it down, would you,” he said, looking around. “People are trying to sleep around here, Captain. And of course we did...sorry, despite I’m sure what is very effective and well-placed rules…” Hermione shot him a withering glare, but no denial. “You can just tell. No matter how hard someone tries not too, they look at someone different who they’ve seen naked…”

“Okay,” she said, throwing up her hand. “We’re done here...I’m going to my room. I have to be up in an hour for training with some new recruits, and I’d like to be able to keep my eyes open for that.”

“Don’t worry,” said Kieran. “You’re no less scary, promise.”

Hermione scoffed and continued toward her room.

Though his promise did make her feel a little bit better.

#####

“Are you ready?”

Hermione looked up from her book. She had been trying to do some research on Goody Holmes, anything to suggest why the Death Eaters may have reason to believe that she had mastered resurrection.

There was so little about her, that she had turned her attention to resurrection spells. There was, of course, research around the resurrection stone, now more solidified after Harry’s use.

This poses the exact opposite problems. There was way too much on resurrection, not surprising given the fear of death that plagued humans, and very little on Goody Holmes, once again, not surprising for a young, Puritan witch, in love with another woman, who was stamped out by fearful men.

It was all infuriating.

She closed the book and stood up.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Any luck,” asked Draco nodding toward her book.

“Nope,” she said. “Either too much information or too little.”

“A bookworms nightmare,” he said, shaking his head, with a teasing smirk.

“Yeah,” she sighed, dramatically. “It’s torture.” She paused and took a breath. “Okay,” she said holding out her hand. Draco looked at it, his eyes widened slightly. She rolled her eyes and smacked him playfully. “For apparating you, daft moron.”

“Oh right,” he said. Hermione almost laughed at the rare moment she saw the beginnings of a blush form on his cheeks. Usually, it was her that was embarrassed by something stupid or silly she had done or misunderstood.

He closed a hand around hers.

“Jesus, Draco,” she said. “Why are your hands always cold?”  
  
“It’s a Slytherin thing,” he said. “It’s why we could all handle sleeping in the dungeons.”

“You do realize you aren’t actually cold-blooded,” she said. “I mean biologically speaking…” She stopped and looked at him. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Prepare yourself...it’s a little bit of a surprise…”

“Wha….”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his question before the familiar and disorienting sensation of disaparating took them both spinning and breaking through the air. It didn’t last long and then they found themselves in an ornate, and gorgeously decorated, gothic house.

Hermione herself had only been there a couple of times. But, she could tell from Draco’s face that he recognized it, that it was familiar, though he was having trouble placing it.

“Son of…”

“Draco!”

Draco turned and Hermione stepped away slightly, as Draco stepped forward tentatively, though Blaise was not possessed with the same reservedness. He quickly crossed the room and hugged Draco tight.

Hermione was, for a moment, surprised by the tenderness of the action. Even Ron and Harry kept to a hug of comrades, it would be quick and rarely, if ever, classified as an embrace. But Blaise was hugging Draco like she hugged Ron and Harry. He held him tight, his palms splayed on his back.

It took Draco a moment to respond before he returned the hug.

“I...I can’t believe it…Granger told me you were with the Sordidum but I thought she was pulling my leg…”

“When have I ever been known to pull legs, Zabini?”

Blaise laughed and pulled away, his hands still grasping Draco’s shoulders as he gave him a once over.

“Look at you,” he said

“I know...I know…” he said. “I’m a right mess.”

“No…” said Zabini, but then he paused. “Well, yes. But it suits you, a lot better than the slimy git look.”

“Gee thanks.”

“What? Not everyone can pull it off like me,” he said, tugging on the lapels of his own tailored suit, cockily.

Draco was still too distracted to say anything. He looked at Blaise and then back at Hermione. Hermione hoped she didn’t see anger in his eyes, and immediately scolded herself for it.

 _That’s the problem with sleeping with him Hermione,_ she thought. _Whether or not he’s angry at you for not sharing information with him should not be your concern._

But he still looked confused more than anything.

“So you’re a part of the Sordidum too?”

“Me,” asked Blaise pointing at himself, and scoffing. “Hell no! I’m not built for that life. I wasn’t built for that life as a Death Eater either. Some of us prefer to get our hands dirty in boardrooms and meetings. So that’s what I do.”

“Blaise, has been more of a benefactor than anything else,” said Hermione. “Like I said, offering financial support, and information when he has it and helps get us into rooms we wouldn’t normally be able to get into.”

“The Zabini name is still respected in both worlds,” said Blaise. “I get invited to parties with Pure-Bloods and at the Ministry, and my cards on the matter are still close to my chest….Drink, Draco?”

Blaise sauntered across the room to his drink cart.

“Sure,” he said. Blaise didn’t ask what he wanted. He never did. And he stopped asking Hermione, knowing full well she didn’t drink on the job unless it helped maintain her cover.  But she would grant Draco an exception this time, considering the circumstances. Draco sat on one of the chairs in the room, and Hermione settled herself at the end of the small couch.

“When did you two get connected,” he asked.

“Pretty soon after we started… it was back in my more...green days and I almost got myself killed a number of times.”

Blaise laughed and walked over to Draco handing him the crystal glass.

“I was convinced you wouldn’t make it another couple of months.”

“I was learning,” protested Hermione.

“I know,” said Blaise. “I should have known from Hogwarts years not to underestimate you, and lo and behold, look at you now, on the Ministries Most Wanted…” He held up his glass to her, before taking a drink. Hermione rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help but smile. Blaise’s cool demeanor was always a relaxing presence to be around.

“Anyway,” he said. “I followed Hermione after a pretty brutal takedown of a few Death Eaters, she almost killed me, but thankfully I was able to get a word in edgewise.”

“But why,” asked Draco. “I didn’t...I mean what’s your motivation…”

“I never quite was as into the pureblood thing as you, mate,” he said. “Now, granted I used the slurs and did my part, but,” he shrugged, “I was raised with intelligence and rationale as the highest of values, and in the end, it wasn’t rational to believe that pure blood made you superior when there was too much evidence to the contrary. But it’s also rational to survive, and for me, at the time, that meant playing the part.” He crossed his legs and sat back against the couch. “And now...well...I remember how terrible it was when the Dark Lord was alive, when the Death Eaters roamed, terrorizing everyone. It was stressful for everyone, granted not as stressful for me as it would be for a Muggle-born, but, come on now, it wasn’t fun for anyone. I was baffled when so many Death Eaters flocked to welcome Voldemort when he returned. It’s not as though they were happier with him in power.”

“The power of brainwashing and indoctrination,” said Hermione absently.

“Right,” he said. “But fortunately for me, I had yet to fall victim to it. So, I just thought if I wanted, on the side, to do what I could to keep them from gaining power, to keep Death Eaters frightened, then…”

“Why didn’t they come to you,” asked Draco, his voice had a slight edge. “Why...why didn’t the Death Eaters that remained approach you and ask you to join them.”  
Hermione could sense in his tone another question, one that was more painful than he was sharing. She wanted to reach out to him, to squeeze his hand...as a friend, of course.

Blaise sighed and leaned forward.

“I know,” he said, his voice low. “I was so sorry to hear about what happened to Narcissa. I actually...I came looking for you,” he said. “I really did, when you went into hiding.”

Draco tossed back his drink in one more gulp and shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, shaking his head. “That was my father’s fault, no one else's.”

“I just was never has involved as you. I never...my parents didn’t get me in as deep as your father did, Draco so…”

“Really,” interrupted Draco, his voice tight. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

Blaise nodded and dropped it abruptly.

“All that to say,” he continued, his voice lighter. “Hermione agreed to my help for her little project and now it’s a well-oiled terrorist group, courtesy of yours truly.” He pointed at himself, eliciting a scoff from Hermione. She didn’t take it to heart though, he was an arrogant son of a bitch, but, as a whole, had been an incredibly helpful ally.

“Now,” said Blaise. “To business.”

He placed his cup down on the table and looked at Hermione. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an envelope, and passed it to her.

“What’s this,” she asked.

“An invitation,” he said, raising his eyebrows and holding back his shit-eating grin.

“Okay,” said Hermione. “Too what?”

“A party...namely the party of one Olaf Eckles, Lord Douchewaffle of the Wizengamot himself. You’ve been trying to get something on him for a year Granger, and I think this party may be your chance. The guest list is an embarrassment of riches in regards to pure-blood socialites, and I think, he may have something up his sleeve for this party.”

Hermione looked at the ornate invitation.

“Who is Sophia Laurent,” she asked.

Blaise shrugged.

“A figment of my imagination, a second cousin by marriage into the Zabini family, a pureblood witch of the highest pedigree.”

Hermione looked up at Blaise, a small smile tugging at her lips.

“So I’m going undercover as Sophia Laurent.”

“It looks like it, darling…”

Hermione could see from the corner of her eyes, a brief frown darken Draco’s face, but it quickly disappeared.

“All right,” said Hermione, standing up. “Thank you, Blaise.”

“Always a pleasure, Granger,” he said, saluting playful.

“I have one more favor,” she said. “Do you think I could have a few moments with your library?”

“Be my guest,” said Blaise, throwing her a million-watt smile and gesturing toward the stairs. “You know where it is.”

She nodded and stood.

“I’m assuming you’re fine here,” she said, to Draco. He nodded, quickly. Hermione wasn’t in a hurry, and she knew what it could be like seeing someone from your past, seeing a friend. She wondered if it would ever feel like that again with Ron and Harry, or would it forever be tainted with a hint of bitterness.

####

Draco watched Blaise watch Granger walk away, and he was, embarrassed to admit, jealous. It was ridiculous. He hadn’t seen his friend in years. He should be feeling grateful, excited, and he was but...he had called Hermione pet names, he was watching her walk away, he had jokes and history with her.

And he was quite certain that jealousy was against the rules.

“So,” said Blaise sinking back into his chair, the hand holding his drink draped elegantly across his leg. Blaise was right, this was the life that Blaise was built for, he fits in perfectly.  Draco, despite being more infected with the hatred, always struggled to look the part that he felt on the inside, Blaise didn’t seem to have that at all. “How long have you and Granger been shagging?!”

Draco almost spit up his drink all over Blaise’s 2,000 Galleon rug, but he choked it back.

“What,” he choked out, had Granger said something to him.

Surely not...she was nothing if not discreet.

“Merlin,” he said, untucking a handkerchief from his pocket and throwing it at him. “Get yourself together Draco.”

“Sorry,” he said, coughing into the handkerchief. “Sorry.”  
  
“Now,” he said. “How long?”

“How do you even...how…”

“Well, it’s not that hard to discern, especially given your school boy crush on her…”

Draco’s eyes widened and were about to repeat the same question when Blaise brushed him off.

“Draco you aren’t as discreet as you think, of course, I knew, and of course I kept it to myself, but I’m assuming seeing Granger as this warrior goddess did not do anything to help it, so I assume it resolved itself in passionate shagging.”

“Big reach there,” sneered Draco. “That crush was ages ago.”

“And there’s the fact that I’m your best friend, perhaps your only friend left, and you still looked at me like you wanted to murder me when I was flirting with her…”

“Did not…”

“Don’t deny it,” he said. “And don’t let that bother you…”

“It didn’t…”

“I flirt with everybody.”

That Draco did remember.

“Plus there’s the look,” continued Blaise.

“What look,” asked Draco, his voice a bit pouty. “The “I’ve seen her naked look”?”

“No,” said Blaise, then he shrugged. “Well yes that too, but I was referring to the way the two of you watch each other.”

“What?”

Blaise sighed and rolled his eyes. “Still as thick as ever,” he said. “Granger is a warrior. She leads an army, she is constantly almost dying. Any room I have ever seen her in, she knows where the exits are for her, she assesses all points of vulnerability, I’ve seen her do it a million times.” He paused and took a sip of his drink, before motioning his glass toward Draco. “With you...she was looking at your blind spots, your vulnerable places, checking for exits that worked for both you. And you…” he said. “You were doing the same thing, for her.”

Draco didn’t say anything, he looked down at his glass, at the ice melting in the bottom of it, mixing with the remaining amber liquid.

“It’s just physical,” he said, parroting Granger’s word. “That’s it.”

Blaise looked at him for a moment, squinting his eyes scrutinizingly. “You sure about that?”

He wasn’t. In fact, he was sure, for him, it was more than that. But, like her, he had no idea what that meant right now in their lives. She, legitimately, had no ability to date right now. He didn’t want to be her “boyfriend”, it all seemed so childish. But he honestly didn’t know what he wanted.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.  “Either way. Right now our...our situation...works. She has way too much on her plate to ask for anything else. This...being her friend, sleeping with her, and doing my job is the best thing I can give her right now.”

“Wow,” said Blaise, sitting back and smiling. “You really do like her.”

“Shut up,” he said rolling his eyes.

The rest of the night was spent catching up. Draco learned about Blaise’s job at the Prophet, about his past string of boyfriends and girlfriends, none, apparently, worth keeping around for very long. They caught up on childhood friends, discovering what some of the other Slytherins were doing these days. And, of course, he shared the news of Goyle’s timely death, which prompted no tears from either of them.

It was a welcome change. There was no history of hurt or bad blood with Blaise. He felt like he was with a friend, who knew him and understood him.

When they left, he hugged him tight, and Blaise promised that they would chat again soon.

“Thanks again,” said Hermione, shaking his hand professionally. “We will be in contact soon.”

“Yes Captain,” he said.

“You’re not a member,” she said. “You don’t have to call me that.”

“It’s a pet name,” he protested.

“Well thank you,” she said. “Will you be at the party?”

“Of course,” he said. “Someone’s got to watch your back in there and make sure you don’t embarrass yourself.”

Hermione grabbed Draco’s hand.

“You ready?”

He nodded.

“Bye you two,” said Blaise, looking at Draco with a knowing smirk. Draco shot him a warning glare, but as they disapparated he heard Blaise yell out in a suggestive voice, “You two kids have fun tonight.”

Thankfully, when they reappeared at Headquarters, Hermione didn’t act as though she had heard it.

  
He was quite certain that blabbing about their sexcapades with Blaise Zabini was definitely against the rules.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry kind of a short filler chapter, being Christmas and all :)

Hermione realized again, when they were back at the house, why her sleeping with Draco, or anyone on her team for that matter, was a bad idea. Because his silence filled her with a flicker of anxiety

She shouldn’t care if he was mad at her, or if he was upset with a decision she made, that should be the last thing on her radar, and, if it was just sex it wouldn’t.   Though sex with a friend was something different altogether too.

Draco made his way silently to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of Firewhiskey without a word.

She shouldn’t follow him, she should go to bed, leave him to pout over whatever was bothering him.

But "shouldn’t" was out the window apparently.

She silently sat next to him at the island. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to read his expression. He didn’t seem angry, he wasn’t holding himself like he was upset, and his eyes were more thoughtful and distant.

She looked at him for a brief moment and then realized what was happening.

Blaise was his Ron and Harry, and she had been a mess after her reunion with them. Was this his version of that? How he coped with being thrust back into his childhood, memories of what had been and what could have been.

“Do you want me to go,” she asked, finally. Her voice wasn’t small or tentative, but genuinely questioning him. He had been there for her, she wanted to be there for him...as a friend, or Captain or whatever, he may need at this point. Maybe he wasn’t like her and he would just want to be left alone.

He continued to stare into the liquid lapping up at the corner of his glass, but he shook his head, slightly.

“No,” he said. “I want you to stay.”

He said it easily, casually, in a way that both warmed and terrified her.

She should go, but, the lines were already blurred beyond all recognition. She reached over and slid her glass to her, taking a burning sip before pushing it back.

“I didn’t think I would ever see him again,” said Draco. “I figured he was living it up on the Zabini fortune somewhere.”

“He looked for you,” said Hermione with a small nod. “When you went missing, he really did. He was worried about you.”

Draco nodded.

“We killed them you know…”

The confession flew from her mouth before she could stop it. She felt him tense beside her, his fingers gripping the glass so tight she worried it may shatter in his hands. “The ones that killed your mother. It didn’t take us long to find out which Death Eaters had tried to recruit you. When we did, we killed them.”

Draco’s jaw twitched. She wanted to reach out and run a hand down his back, to coax him into unfurling his hunched and coiled body. But she didn’t. Whatever emotions he was feeling, she didn’t want to deter them.

“Your mother...I...I didn’t know her,” she said. “But I know she saved Harry. She could have ratted him out, told Voldemort he was alive and we would have been fucked.” She nodded and looked down at the table. “So when they killed her, we killed them.”  
Draco breathed in, ragged and heavy.

“That’s what I should have done,” he said. “But I was a coward. She told me to run and...and I did. I thought she was coming with me but when I...when I looked back she was gone.”

“You stayed alive.”

He snorted.

“That’s the definition of a coward isn’t it?”

“Her job was to protect you,” she said. “She did that.”

Hermione reached tentatively toward him, before dropping her hand on his forearm, squeezing it through the thin fabric of his sweater.

“And now you’re protecting people too,” she said with a nod. “I didn’t know her, but I think she’d be proud of you.”

She braced herself, wondering if she had overstepped. She didn’t know his mother. She knew she raised a selfish, egotistical racist. But people were rarely simple, she had come to find out. Despite what Harry and Ron may believe about her and the Sordidum, she took this account in every decision she made. Every death she carried out.

She had moved beyond her simple black and white thinking of her childhood, she could see the shades of grey that lived there too.

Narcissa had raised a child who became a bully, but she had raised a boy she loved, she had raised a boy who couldn’t kill Dumbledore and who, motivations questionable or not, didn’t give them away in the Malfoy home.

Harry had been a brave teenager, who now couldn’t do what reality demanded of him. That was a shade of grey.

At Hogwarts, Ron could be as spiteful as anyone, but he still followed his best friends into danger and death.

James Potter had been a punk, a punk who befriended a werewolf, a pitiful Peter Pettigrew and a displaced Black, a punk who would grow up to sacrifice everything for the wizarding world.

As a child, that had been a difficult world to live in. She was so rational, still was, but didn’t know how to be someone who thrived on being right while simultaneously seeing ‘right’ as not quite attainable.

Draco was a shade of grey.

Narcissa was a shade of grey.

“I’m really proud of you too,” she said finally. “For...for what it’s worth.”

She pushed away from the island and turned to go to the door, but she found herself being tugged back, by a cold hand around her wrist.

He finished off the drink and then stood.

He technically wasn’t breaking the rules, there was no couple-hand holding allowed, she never specified about wrist holding. And it had become a bit of a trigger for her, every time she looked down and saw his pale hand wrapped around her wrist, it made her mouth go dry and a flush of heat scurry up her neck and cheeks.

“You coming with me tonight?”

The question came out low and gravelly as he looked down at her. She found it absurd that a few months into their odd little arrangement, that look still made her feel achingly self-conscious and stripped down in all the best ways, that when his voice dropped like that it still made the room shift disorientingly beneath her feet.

She nodded, not looking away from his eyes.

“All right,” he said, nodding toward the door. She turned, pulling her arm so her wrist escaped through the loop of his hand. But before she could pull away completely, her fingers found his, tangling with them, almost instinctively.

She was breaking the rules, but it was a small one, after all? What could it hurt?

She turned toward the door and pulled him behind her, trying not to focus on the way his thumb traced along her skin.

######

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go?”

Hermione looked in the mirror as Rowen yanked on the laces of the corset. She exhaled sharply, certain she heard her ribs crack under her skin.

“Yeah,” she gasped. “Not that I don’t trust…” She winced as Rowen tugged once more. “Shit!”

“Sorry, Captain,” said Rowen, offering a sympathetic wince. “But you’re going for the whole Pure-blood uniform here.”

“I know,” she

“You should be good.”

Rowen picked up the ostentatious ball gown and helped Hermione climb into it. Hermione turned to face herself in the mirror as Rowen worked on the long train of buttons that ran down her back.

The dress was, in a word, ridiculous.

And it made Hermione scoff.

It was emerald green with black lace detailing, fashionable, she supposed, if one was plotting to steal a King from one’s sister and upend the whole of the British Monarchy, but ridiculous for any other occasion.

Unfortunately, she would fit right in with the Death Eater crowd in this.

“All right,” said Rowen. “Remember,” she said. “No heroics.”

“Excuse me,” said Hermione. “Whose the Captain here?” 

“You,” she said. “You’re also going in without backup…”

“Blaise will be there.”

Rowen rolled her eyes.

“Like I said, without backup...Get any information that you can but don’t engage, apparate out of there if things get dicey.”

“Thanks…”

“I’m serious captain,” said Rowen, her voice stern enough to make Hermione pause. “I have a bad feeling about this and…”

“I promise,” said Hermione. “I’m not going to fight anyone. I am looking and listening.” 

Rowen nodded.

“All right…”

Hermione picked her wand up and pointed it at herself, slowly carefully transfiguring her features. She started with her hair, smoothing her curls into long silky waves of black hair, then her eyes faded from honey-brown to dark green, and then her skin faded from a dark brown to a light tan, her splattering of freckles shrinking and disappearing in her skin.

Hermione looked at the almost stranger in the mirror. Someone who knew her well might be able to tell, but a Pure Blood who only bothered to look down their nose at her would have no idea.

It was odd, as she regarded herself in the mirror, how around her third year she would have longed for a spell that could do this to her, to smooth her out, sand her down, make her palpable and acceptable.

She wondered at what point in her life she had begun to regard her hair, her skin, her eyes, her nose as beautiful just as they were. She wondered that she would ever want to look like this new reflection forever.

“Remember,” said Rowen. “You have to carry yourself like you think you’re better than everyone. Now that shouldn’t be hard because you will, literally, be better than every single person in that room, so just carry yourself like…

“Rowen,” said Hermione, reaching out a hand and grasping the woman’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve been undercover before.” 

“I know,” said Rowen, exhaling, and nodding. “I know.”

“All right,” she said. “I’m leaving my wand here so it doesn’t give me away.”

“And you’re getting that Walkie Talkie potion right?”

“Yes,” she said. “As soon as…”

The wrap of knuckles on the door interrupted her.

“Granger, you decent?”  
“It’s not like you haven’t seen it all before,” muttered Rowen, with a playful smile. Hermione rolled her eyes.

“Come in.”

“I got the potion here...I just need some of your…” He looked up from the two vials of potion resting in his hand, and blanched, his mouth gaping slightly like a fish. She felt her insides clench tightly. This was his world, this is what he was used to, probably at the end of the day what some part of him still craved. That shouldn’t upset her. She knew the familiar was comfortable, but he had never looked quite so dumbstruck at her when she was…

  
“That’s transfiguration right,” the question flew from his throat, awkwardly loud and the tone hard to place.

“What,” asked Hermione. 

  
“That’s not...none of that is permanent right, your hair, your skin, your…”   
“Of course it’s transfiguration you moron,” said Rowen.  

Draco stared at her for a few seconds before shaking his head, a brief flicker of relief crossing his face, before he cleared his throat.  “Of course,” he said. “Sorry, just… it was convincing transfiguration.”

“What I’m going for,” she said, but her voice was kind as she fought back the small smile tugging at her mouth.

“Ummm here,” he said, handing her the vial. “Just add your contribution to this one and then bottoms up, you’ll be connected to us.”

  
“It seems excessive,” she said.

Rowen shook her head furiously.

“Nope, uh huh,” she said. “You aren’t getting out of the one safety precaution we are asking of you.”

“Fine...fine...fine,” said Hermione, holding up her hands to silence Rowen before she started fighting too hard.

She quickly accessed her memories, dipping the silvery river into the vial and shaking it up before handing it back Draco. He accepted it and past the other vial to her. His hand grazed her, his fingers curling in ever so slightly around hers, before pulling away, leaving the vial in her palm.

“All right,” she said. “I’d better get going, wouldn’t want to be late to my first ever Death Eater ball.”

  
“Don’t call it that while you’re there,” said Rowen.

“Rowen I swear to Merlin if you talk to me again like I’m a new recruit I’m…”

  
“Sorry...sorry...sorry,” she said. Rowen raised her hand to her forehead and gave her a salute. “You got this, Captain.”

Hermione smiled widely at her, her true self peering out from behind the magic. 

  
“Of course I do,” she said, and without a word or parting glance, she was gone.

 

#####

When she was gone, Draco stood there for a moment next to Rowen.

“She’ll be fine,” said Draco with a nod.

“Of course,” said Rowen. “She’s the Captain. I just...I don’t feel good about this.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me either.”

Rowen offered him a sympathetic smile.

“Downside of sleeping with your boss, huh Malfoy?”

He snorted.

“Not many but yeah, that’s one of them for sure.”

Rowen patted his back sympathetically.

“Come on,” she said. “Kieran is waiting.”

  
Draco followed her to Hermione’s office. It would be okay. He, Kieran and Rowen would all be waiting, ready to apparate to her side if she needed it.

But Rowen was right, this was the part of falling for Granger that almost made him wonder if it was worth it.

Almost.


End file.
